I spent this past summer in Europe taking classes and diving into other cultures. While I was away, I came across a trend I was not expecting. Everyone smokes cigarettes. When I say everyone, I really mean everyone. Fifteen year-olds all the way to 80 year-olds, sharing cigarettes everywhere you went.
When I pictured walking the streets of Prague, stepping all over the buds was not in the day-dream. I was constantly walking through smoke no matter what city I was in. I ate my meals while also inhaling the smell of burning tobacco. I had no awareness of this trend in Europe.
Returning back to the US, I took to much gratitude of the smoking laws here in the states. I have taken notice of the fact that our streets are cleaner, the restaurants are fresher, and my lungs are happier.
While it isn't as much of a trend, because of all other fads being brought out, the few cigarettes I pass don't have as much impact on me. Especially when the building you called home for 6-weeks never let you forget what the smell of tobacco is.
Now being home, I can enter a restaurant and not battle or worry about smoke sinking into my clothes fabric or in my food. It is amazing how casual it is on the other side of the world. The way people are raised differently, the exposure to different products and the way everyday life is lived is something everyone should be open to learning.
It was eye-opening to compare the health of those I saw in Europe to those I see here; in Kansas specifically. It is also more settling that the United States is working to decrease the interests in tobacco, even if high school and college students are trying to fight it with the new vaping trend.