FREE ESSAY ON DANGERS OF SMOKING

DANGERS OF SMOKING

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were a little over
300,000 deaths related to AIDS in 1997. That's like taking half the people in Baltimore
county and making them disappear. Another 75,000 died from alcohol. In addition to that,
20,000 died from illegal drug use, and 25,000 died from motor vehicle crashes. But if you
were to add those numbers up, they still wouldn't equal the amount of deaths that were
related to tobacco. In fact, each year, smoking kills more people than AIDS, alcohol,
drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides and fires combined. Tobacco is a concern not
only for the person that is smoking, but it also effects the population that is not a
tobacco user by increasing medical costs and taxes, and increases the mortality rate with
second hand smoke.
According to the United States Public Health Service, there are approximently 54 million
Americans that smoke each year. The use of tobacco has easily become number one cause of
death and concern in the United States.Smoking is direcly linked to bronchitis;
emphysema; coronary heart disease; cirrhoses of the liver; peripheral vascular disease;
bladder cancer; peptic ulcers; lung cancer; larynx cancer; lip, tongue, and gum cancers;
tobacco amblyopia; adverse drug reactions tachycardia, increased blood pressure,
decreased exercise tolerance, coronary vasoconstriction, elevated blood carboxyhemoglobin
concentration, and increased tendency to thrombosis. In addition, 14 percent of all
premature deliveries may be due to maternal smoking and 87 percent of all lung cancer
cases are due to tobacco. Also, The CDC says people who smoke increase their risk of
death from bronchitis and emphysema by nearly 10 times. The CDC calls it the number one
preventable cause of pre mature death in the US. And the Surgeon General has called it
'the most important of the known modifiable risk factors for coronary heart disease in
the United States. What makes it so hard to quit?? Well, many researchers consider
nicotine to be the most physically addictive of all the psychoactive drugs including
crack cocaine and heroin. Three out of four smokers want to quit but they cannot and 75%
of smokers say they wish they never started. Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide,
the deadly gas found automobile exhaust, in concentrations 400 times greater than is
considered safe in industrial workplaces. Carbon monoxide is the deadly gas that you
always hear of people dying from in houses. What it does is bind to the hemoglobin in
your blood at a rate10 times faster and easier than oxygen does, making it imposible for
your blood to transport oxygen to your organs and tissues. Also substances in tobacco
damage the lining of the respiratory tract and decrease the lungs' ability to fight off
infection. According to the CDC, smoking triples the risk of dying from heart disease
among middle-aged men and women. The American Cancer Society's findings indicate that by
the age of eighty five, only 5 percent of lifetime smokers are still alive, as compared
with 37 percent of those who never smoked. In addition, smokers at age thirty can expect
to live an average age of 64.8 years if they continue to smoke, while nonsmoking 30 year
olds can expect to reach the age of 82.7. That's an additional 20 years of life with your
husband, wife, grandchildren and loved ones.
Not only is tobacco a concern for the user, but it also has an effect on taxpayers and
insurance policy holders. Domestic cigarette sales exceed $45 billion per year. And
exports of cigarettes is an additional $7 billion. While consumers spent almost 55
billion dollars on cigarettes last year, smoking costs Americans and insurance companies
$97.2 billion each year in health care and lost productivity. For every pack of
cigarettes sold, the government collects 99 cents on it . Of that, only 33 cents goes
towards health care. With the cost of medical care due to tobacco, they would need to
increase the 33 cents to 4 dollars per pack to keep up with it. And the tobacco companies
need to gain 5000 new smokers each day just to keep up with the ones they loose from
death and quitting. 
But this problem isn't just isolated to the smokers and the taxpayers, this habit also
effects the health of non smokers as well. The American Heart Association last fall
released a seven-year study showing that never-smoking spouses of smokers have more than
a 20 percent greater chance of death from coronary heart disease than those who have
never smoked who live with non-smokers. There are an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 cases
every year of infections, such as bronchitis and pneumonia in infants and children under
18 months of age who breathe secondhand smoke. It's also estimated that from 37,000 to
40,000 people die from heart and blood vessel disease caused by other people's smoke each
year. 
Next time you decide to pick up tobacco, ask yourself if the two minutes of pleasure is
worth the damage that is being done to yourself, the damage that you will encounter down
the road, the damage to your loved ones and the damage to the rest of the population!!!
Bibliography
About Smoking: Tips for Teens. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, 1997.
American Heart Association. Active and Passive Tobacco Exposure: A Serious Pediatric
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American Heart Association. Cigarette Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease. [Online]
Available http://www.amhrt.org/Heart_and_Stroke_A_Z_Guide/cigs.html. 1997.
American Heart Association. Cigarette Smoking, Cardiovascular Disease, and Stroke.
[Online] Available http://www.americanheart.org/Scientific/statements/1997/119702.html,
April 1997.
American Lung Association. Secondhand Smoke and Your Family. [Online] Available
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Insel, Paul M., Roth, Walton T., Rollins, L. McKay, Peterson, Ray A. Core Concepts in
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Smoking From all Sides. Health Aspects. [Online] Available
http://www.cs.brown.edu/~lsh/docs/health.html. 1997.