Self Evaluation

1. My social issue is smoking and how smoking effects the enviroment. Smoking manifests itself in society through people. The people who smoke contribute to this issue. There are a few solutions that may or may not work to solve this issue. One is to ban smoking from public places so people around smokers don't suffer as well. Another is to eliminate the companies who make cigarettes. I have read in the newspaper that there will be a law passed that prohibits smoking in public places which will start as early as next year. This law will be helpful to those who are opposed to smoking, but bar owners would not favor this law. One way that the bars could change this is to sign for a waiver. This way, the people oppose the law and those who are for it are content.

2. Of my eight artifacts, I found the topics of the 'Smoking Ban in China'(1) and 'Effects of Smoking on Teens'(2) most informative to me. The 'Smoking Ban in China' showed me how much the restaurant owners were going to be affected. This artifact showed me both sides of this issue and if I agree with the ban in China. Also, 'Effects of Smoking on Teens' taught me how teens like me are drawn into smoking. I have never understood why people start smoking at such a young age, but this artifact helped me understand why. The one artifact that surprised me was the 'Smoking and Teens Fact Sheet'(3) because I had no idea that teenagers smoked that much or started smoking in their early teens.

MLA
1.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 9 Jan. 2007 .
2. Dikky Sinn. "Hong Kong begins year with ban on public smoking." The Boston Globe. 1 Jan 2007.
3.American Lung Association. 22 Jan.2007

3. The media portrays smoking as unhealthy and as a danger. In the past few years, smoking ads have not been permitted on television. The media influences perception because the public already knows the dangers of smoking, but the media shows commercials that tell stories of smoker's lives. I recently saw the movie, "Thank You for Smoking".The movie portrays Nick Naylor who works as a lobbyist for a smoking research company as deceiving. When he is faced with a question, he doesn't answer the question straight on, but he tries to prove the prove the other side wrong. Nick Naylor doesn't explain how his side of the matter is right, but he side tracks and doesn't answer the question directly. Nick naylor came up with an idea to sell smoking to the public by hiring celebrities to smoke in a movie. This is what happens in real life. When a company wants to sell their product, they hire a well known celebrity and pay them to endorse their product.

4. I found the majority of my information on the internet. The research method that worked best for me was searching theough the databases and finding topics about smoking. I found the using the internet easy because I am already familiar with the search engines and much of the information I know about, I find on the internet. I also found this difficult because I could not just take information i find on the internet and publish it, I had to do more research on the credibility of the source. The resources I did not fully utilize is the media, which can be a main resource. I could have researched how the media, such as movies, music and the news portrays smoking. To improve the quality of my research, I could have represented both sides os smoking more. For example, I could have researched more on the restaurant owners who could be affected by the ban as much as I did on the actual ban.

5. At the beginning of this project, I was one-sided. I only concentrated on the evils of smoking and cigarette companies. I knew that the tar in cigarettes and tobacco caused lung cancer, but I now know it is much more than that. If the cigarette companies were destroyed, the workers would lose their jobs. I will continue to inform the people in my life about the dangers of smoking and how it can affect their lives.