English 103
Tobacco has a long history in the America since 600 to 900 A.D. It was used predominantly in medical purposes and the people on that time did not smoke every day (Healthliteracy.worlded.org). Today, smoking has become the major problem in the world since 1950s. According to the cross-section data obtained from 187 countries, nowadays there are more than 967 million of people, who smoke every day compared to 721 million in 1980s (BBC.com). It comprises about 1/10 population in the world and there are more than 480,000 deaths per year that are caused by smoking cigarettes in the United States (CDC.gov).
In my opinion, smoking is just like pulling a gun in front of our face. It is a little bit exaggerated, but it's true, since we can't predict when we will die by the diseases caused from tobacco at the same time being aware that it has lethal consequences. No matter how bad smoking is, we can still fine some benefits of smoking. For example, lower risk of obesity, lower risk of death after some heart attacks. Smoking industries create many jobs for people. On the other hand, it's hard to quit after we start smoking cigarettes. According to CDC, there are about 68.9% of adult smokers, who wanted to stop smoking and only 42.7% of them had made an attempt to quit smoking in the past year (CDC.gov).
The main element of cigarettes is tobacco.
Tobacco is a green, leafy plant that is grown in warm climates. After it is picked, it is dried, ground up, and used in different ways. It can be smoked in a cigarette, pipi or cigar. It can be chewed (called smokeless tobacco or chewing tobacco) or sniffed through the nose (called snuff)” (Healthliteracy.worlded.org).
When tobacco is burning, the smoke it makes have very high content of nicotine and it's the main reason that makes cigarettes become so harmful.
The components of cigarettes are the main reason that cost our health and money. Cigarettes consist of hazardous elements that have negative effects on our health and well-being.
There are approximately 600 ingredients in cigarettes, when burned, they create 4,000 chemicals no matter if we don't smoke, and we can still be harmed by being around the smoker. At least 50 of these chemicals are known to cause cancer, and many are poisonous (Lung.org).
There are some other chemicals that we can find in cigarettes: they are Acetone, Ammonia, Arsenic, Benzene, Butane, Cadmium, Carbon Monoxide, Formaldehyde, Hexamine, Lead, Naphthalene, Methanol, Nicotine, Tar, and Toluene. As was mentioned above, Acetone is used to make TVs screen and is used to remove nail polish. The concentration of Acetone in cigarettes irritates the respiratory tract (Oxygen.org.au). If we inhale low concentrations of Acetone, it would only make our nose feel bad but if we keep inhaling high concentrations in the long term, we would get Defeating and Dermatitis. Those kinds of diseases may not kill us but they can make us look really bad and might have some bad effects on our relationship with our friends or family. Nicotine is commonly used in insecticides.
Nicotine is very addictive when delivered to the lung by inhaling tobacco smoke. It increases the release of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters, which help regulate mood and behavior. One of these neurotransmitters is dopamine, which may improve your mood and activate feelings of pleasure. Experiencing these effects from nicotine in tobacco is what makes tobacco so addictive (Mayoclinic.org).
Only Nicotine will not cause big heath problems. Nevertheless, when we are smoking a cigarette, the Nicotine will burn with all others chemicals, which makes the cigarette discharge some harmful gas that causes cancer and related problems. Turpentine is a paint thinner, in cigarette smoke, it irritates the respiratory tract. High exposures cause kidney and nerve damage, if people breathe in the vapors of turpentine oil to reduce the chest congestion that goes along with some lung diseases (WebMD.com). Ammonia is normally used in household cleaning products (Oxygen.org.au). The tobacco industry says it improves flavor and makes tobacco more flexible (Oxygen.org.au) and it also makes the delivery of the nicotine to the brain faster. Arsenic is an element in the environment; you can find it in rocks, water, air plants and animals. It has no taste or smell and it is well know that would cause cancer and many others health problem. Benzene can be found in crude oil, paint, glues, and thinners. It seems like most of them have no odor and are not edible, however, Benzene also can cause cancer and leukemia. Luckily, Benzene applies when the cigarette is burning so it won't bother us in our normal life but when there is someone smoking around us, it would harm us from the second hand smoke.
Second hand smoke is the biggest problem that has many bad effects for the non-smokers. Secondhand smoke (SHS) is also known to be an environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) (Cancer.org). About the SHS, there are two forms of smoke that comes from the smoke from burning tobacco. First of all, it is a side stream smoke, which comes from the lighted end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar. The next one is a mainstream smoke. It is exhaled by a smoker. Those types of smokes can harm non-smokers. SHS can cause our life in danger. There are about 42,000 deaths from heart disease in people who were non-smokers. About 3,400 people died from lung cancer and all of them were non-smoker.
Between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections (lung and bronchus) in children under 18 months of age, with 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations each year (Cancer.org).
SHS also causes cancer and has been linked to lung cancer recently.
There is also some evidence suggesting it might be linked to lymphoma, leukemia, and brain tumors in children, and cancers of the larynx (voice box), pharynx (throat), nasal sinuses, brain, bladder, rectum, stomach, and breast in adults (Cancer.org).
Second hand smoking has economical interpretation known as the concept of negative externality. Negative externality takes place when one agent’s actions cause the second agent to lose welfare, and the second agent is not compensated for that. The negative externality of SHS is high enough as non-smokers have risk to get cigarette-related diseases. For that reason I think the government should ban the cigarette smoking. No matter you are smoking or not, if there are some smokers around us, we would still have cancer of some other lung diseases because of second hand smoke.
According to American Lung Association, in 2009, there were about 46.6 million of smokers, 20.6 percent of adults were smoking cigarettes and 70% of them started smoking regularly at age 18 or younger and 86% at age 21 or younger in the U.S. It a very serious number since there are more than 1/5 of the U.S population is smoking (Lung.org). Smoking cigarettes causes a lot of healthy problems in our body, there are 1/5 of the U.S people would have cancer or others diseases, which might increase the health care highly increase the cost of health care. The newest data from American Cancer Society revealed the expenditures on tobacco-related health-care from 2000 to 2004: the US has the biggest costs, 96 billion dollar; the followers are France, 16.6 billion dollar, UK 9.5billion, China 6.2billion and Canada 2.8billion. The tobacco-related heated health cost and productivity loss in the US is 193 billion, i.e. we buy a pack of cigarettes for 6.36USD, but the health-related s per pack of cigarettes is 35USD. It means when we smoke one pack of cigarettes, we have to pay 5.5 times of its price to be our heath care cost. I would like to say it's a boomerang effect, you throw it out, and then it hurts you 5 times more in return.
I would like to tell you about my personal relationship to cigarettes. I am a non-smoker, but 90% of my friends around me smoke on a regular basis. Yes, it's 90 %, it sounds funny but I am the only guy in my group that is a non-smoker. I don't want to smoke, because it smells so bad and I don't even want to put it in my mouth even once. Some people might want to try it, because they think it is cool, you will become handsome when you are smoking, that happened when I was studying in my high school in Hong Kong, the school I was studying was pretty bad and the classmate around me also smoked. They though it is cool since there were some movies that showed us that smoking would make you look cool and you can get a girlfriend if you smoke. It sounds very surprising, but it is true. In my opinion, some kind of movies and TV shows change our minds and it would send some wrong information to us, especially for kids and teenagers. Should it be remembered how Marlboro ad changed the way people think in early 1950s. The Marlboro Cowboy was presented to the public as a brutal and tough man with a cigarette. The Marlboro Man has shaped to a significant extent the social underpinnings of cigarette consumption, and turned out to take a distinctive place in the society by making cigarettes very popular.
There are a lot of people, who have been smoking since they were young. I would like to say it all relates to their friends and family. If a child sees his parents smoking, he accepts it as a normal way of life. Smoking becomes a dangerous habit and without preventive measures such as education from parents and society it is hard eradicate the core reasons.
Teens of a parent who smoked, even if the mother of father quit before the teen was born are more likely to smoke than those whose parents are nonsmokers, a new study finds (Consumer.Healthday.com).
Sometimes, it might not be your choice to smoke or not, it might be your effect of your families. Like myself, my both mother and father are non-smokers and they taught me since I was a kid that smoking cigarettes are bad for our health. One of my uncles died of cancer because of smoking cigarettes, I loved my uncle so much since I was a kid, and he always bought me some toys and candies. One day, my mother told me that he got lung cancer when I was 12 years old. I was so young on that time and I did not know what cancer was. My uncle died after 2 months the cancer was detected.
There is a punch of harmful things from cigarettes but people still want to smoke. The biggest problem is that the rate of smokers is growing up and mainly constitute of youth. For example in China, there were around 1.6 trillion people that smoked during 1992 and 2009. Now there are around 2.3 trillion people, who smoke and it is predicted that by 2030 43.75% (3.5million) of people will be dead from tobacco addiction in China (Chinadaily.com). Next, the age of smoker is become younger; there is a video that shows us that there are 3-year old Chinese kids smoking on a train (LiveLeak.com). I believe that is true because one of my friends that came from China told me that their family wants him to learn to smoke cigarettes because they think, once he smokes, he grows. I know this is a nonsense, but it's true, because most of the people from China or some developing countries like India are unaware that cigarettes would harm their heath and kids brain vary badly. They have never learned about the cigarettes since most of them are poor and they might not have a chance to go to school.
I agree that smoking cigarettes tobacco should be banned since they are so bad for our health, but on the other hand, there is a lot of money for Government or cigarettes company that come from cigarette industry. About the government, if we ban cigarettes it would be devastating to the economy since cigarette industry constitutes a part of GDP. First, there is a lot of tax income from cigarettes. Only in 2011, there was about 17 millions tax income only from cigarettes. If the smoking is banned, then the sellers of cigarettes may create a black market, thus engage in illegal sales of cigarettes. Other people involved in tobacco industry will suffer. For example, the tobacco farmers, laborers, paper companies, factories, smoke shops and so on. If cigarettes are banned, companies will declare bankruptcy and the workers will lose their jobs. This knock-on effect is one of the biggest problems that results in gridlock: governments cannot issue a policy and propose sufficient measures to address the problem related to smoking. Nevertheless, the belief that tobacco is crucial to the economy is a well-designed myth. Supporters of cigarettes claim that without tobacco industries, the profits generated by cigarette growing and tobacco manufacturing, the economy of the country is expected to face declining trend in budget alongside with a significant drop in tax revenues. In the reality this is not true. The very idea of the economic presence does not mean economic dependence on that industry, i.e. the false assumption that government is largely dependent on that economic segment. Tobacco industry is rarely important to a significant extent to the economy. All the money that people spent on cigarettes will be spent on completely another bunch of goods and services, which implies that economy will and can be sustained without tobacco industries.
I think most of the smokers have tried to quit. What makes it so hard? According to Helpguide.org, smoking tobacco is a both physical addiction and a psychological habit (Helpguide.org). The nicotine from cigarettes provides a temporary and addictive effect. Eliminating that regular fix of nicotine will cause your body to experience physical withdrawal symptoms and cravings, Because of nicotine's “feel good” effect on the brain; you may also have become accustomed to smoking as a way of coping with stress, depression, anxiety, or even boredom (Helpguide.org). This is the reason why people cannot kick cigarettes off once they try it. At the same time, the act of smoking is ingrained as a daily ritual. It may be an automatic response for you to smoke a cigarette with your morning coffee, while talking a break from work or school, or during your commute home at the end of a long day. Perhaps your friends, family members, and colleagues smoke, and it has become part of the way you relate with them (Helpguide.org). Thus, quitting smoke cigarette is a long term activate, it not the kind be behavior that we can just quit.
Totally banned smoking cigarettes are imposable from nowadays but, I think there should be some ways to “snow down” the problem of cigarettes. The government can issue other types of policies apart from imposition of complete ban of cigarettes in the form of taxation and regulatory norms. The policies should aim at reducing the demand as well as supply-side of cigarettes. One of the most common measures in decreasing demand is a tax increase. If we compare US prices on cigarettes from the historical perspective, then it becomes evident that they did not change much, given the inflation-adjustment. By increasing taxes the elastic demand coming from youth will result in drop in consumption rates, whereas the more inelastic demand would consist of experienced smokers and adults. If the government increase the taxes from cigarettes, the low income smoker will stop smoking because it might be too expensive for them as a low income earner, and kids or teenager would stop buying it since that are too expensive.
Other measures would be to impose non-price measures such as information dissemination, bans on cigarette advertising and promotion, warning labels on the cigarette packs, and restrictions on public smoking. Advertising and consumer information would be helpful since it can let the people who don't understand the bad effects of cigarettes be acknowledged to the consequences of the cigarette consumption. Even if we can't totally ban smoking cigarettes, we can use those ways to solve the problem.
Works Cited
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