Smart is the key. You can use a raw pointer, but that doesn't tell or enforce anything about lifetime. How long will that pointer be valid - can I save it to a class member - we don't know.

C++ gives you more more things, but none of them are enforced. (I'm sure Rust wants those same things at time - but since I'm not aware of anyone with any ideas how to enforce them so Rust has decided to not allow those - a reasonable choice overall, but sometimes annoying when it means you can't do something that you "know" is correct just because it can't be proved correct in the language)