Be Smart, Don’t start.
We can vividly recall the endless television commercials from reporters and speeches we received from teachers that informed us of the side affects of smoking. As young boys, neither one of us quite understood what was so bad about smoking. We just knew it was frowned upon, and it was strictly discouraged by our parents. Recently our foundations were shaken when we read an article by Peter Brimelow that presented smoking as beneficial and a preventative tool against certain diseases and cancers. Was our education about smoking just a myth programmed into our heads? According to Brimelow it was. Brimelow provides clear and evident research and statistics supporting the fact that smoking is healthy.
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He includes the results of British researcher D.M. Warburton, whose studies show that smoking stimulates alertness, dexterity, and cognitive capacity for the smoker. Alertness and dexterity can be useful when trying to stay awake while driving for example. It is also stated that by smoking one can either be stimulated or calmed depending on how the cigarette is smoked (Brimelow 141). These are examples of grounds that back up Brimelow’s major claim that smoking is good for one’s health.
Thank You for Not Smoking
One of the main reasons Brimelow insists that smoking can be good for one is the fact that it can be beneficial to one’s health. Every person is concerned with their health and they want to do the best things possible to preserve their health as long as possible. Therefore, if smoking helps preserve our health, everyone should be smoking. But why is there so much talk of the negative effects of smoking? According to the Health Tobacco Report, eighty percent of smokers die of lung cancer. Also, twenty-five percent of heart attacks are caused from smoking. In addition, the death rate of smoking females on birth control is three times higher than that of non-smoking females. There are 487,000 smoking related deaths each year. This number is higher than deaths related to drugs, alcohol, murder, and fires combined. Other reports done state alarming statistics such as one in every three Americans die from
According to “The Action of Smoking and Health,” every six seconds someone loses their life as a result of a tobacco related disease. It’s hard to realize how damaging cigarette smoking’s effect can be until you experience it first hand. It is almost certain that every one knows someone who is currently a smoker or was a smoker at some point in their life. For years smoking was the seen as the “cool” thing to do, it was how to “fit in.” There was no real emphasis placed on the dangers of this particular habit, and as a result, it became a world wide trend. In the past, technology and medicine were not nearly advanced enough to be able to determine just how harmful tobacco usage is. However, as we have made medical and
One of my first memories in the United States was taking a Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E) class. I was in sixth grade and a top student, as talking about drugs and alcohol and the way they affect us was fascinating to me. This is why, the following year, I volunteered to become a peer educator in Teens Against Tobacco Use (T.A.T.U). For a couple of years, I gave presentations to young students which included facts, demonstrations, and games, to spread the knowledge that tobacco is harmful and that staying away from smoking prolongs life expectancy and increases the quality of life. It should come as no surprise, then, that I consider myself a big proponent of staying tobacco-free and encouraging others to quit smoking as a great way to promote health. I remember watching my mom and sister as they took part in their nightly ritual of smoking a few cigarettes to unwind. “Did you know that a main component of cigarettes is used as rocket fuel?” I would ask them, as I opened the window and they stared back at me blankly. “We know, we know” was the answer every time. I knew that convincing them to quit was no easy task, but I was committed. Day after day, I proudly stated a new fact about the evils of smoking. Finally one day, they quit. At first, they attributed it to the cost. Since we had just immigrated to the United States, the cost of cigarettes was simply not something they could afford. I didn’t believe it. I proudly
Dr. David L. Katz, A clinical professor of public health, and director of the prevention research center at Yale University School of Medicine expresses his opinion on public smoking in the following passage.
The essay “Thank You for Smoking,” written by Peter Brimelow, is far from an influential essay on why people should smoke. Through this essay, Brimelow makes an effort to convince the audience smoking is actually beneficial to your health. I find it hard for people to write about what they think are the benefits of smoking when there are so many obvious reasons why you should not smoke.
in order to sustain a healthier life style. This essay seeks to illustrate the impact of smoking on a
Many smokers, like Sload, take their first puffs in college. Other students experiment with cigarettes in high school but start smoking heavily in college. Everyone I surveyed and interviewed is aware that smoking was responsible for the deaths of many people every year. They know it increased the risk of heart attack and stroke and adversely affects breathing and the lungs. And like smokers of any age, many college students are actively trying to quit. Mandie Sload knows that for or five cigarettes a day were four or five too many. She plans to quit someday. She understands that if she quits her breath will smell better;
People that smoke are the people that get all the unhealthy stuff in a body like cancer and many diseases that can be caused.“If smoking persists at the current rate among young adults in this country, 5.6 million of today’s Americans younger than 18 years of age are projected to die prematurely from a smoking-related illness. Another 100,000 were babies who died of sudden infant death syndrome (often referred to as SIDS) or complications from prematurity, low birth weight, or other conditions caused by parental smoking, particularly smoking by the mother. “Smoking has been around for a long time. The problem with smoking became worse when “production climbed markedly when another cigarette-making machine was developed in the 1880s by James Albert Bonsack, which vastly increased the productivity of cigarette companies, which went from making about 40,000 hand-rolled cigarettes daily to around 4 million.” Smoking is a problem around the world because it causes lung cancer, many other cancers, and some horrible diseases. This problem should be solved because “More than 10 times as many U.S. citizens have died prematurely from cigarette smoking than have died in all the wars fought by the United States during its history.”
Many drugs are used, misused, and abused in American society today. Some of these carry stigma in the general population, forcing users into an underground drug subculture. Others are accepted and almost promoted under certain circumstances. Tobacco is one of those drugs. Tobacco will be discussed in the context of cigarette smoking. This is not to undermine the existence or danger of other forms of tobacco, but instead to have an exhaustive discussion of cigarette smoking and its societal impact. Cigarettes are a means of inhaling tobacco, where it enters the lungs and is absorbed through the blood vessels, traveling to the heart, from which it is finally pumped to the brain (Hogan, Gabrielsen, Luna, and Grothaus 2003:76). Cigarettes are detrimental to society because they not only affect the user who chooses to smoke; they impact people around them through second-hand and residual smoke. The damage done by cigarettes is not impossible to address. Successful prevention measures are already in place, but this paper intends to suggest other more direct measures, especially related to statutory regulations.
Smoking is injurious to health and a preventable cause of premature death. In the U.S.; it is estimated that one in each five adults smoke currently and about 480,000 people die prematurely from diseases caused by smoking or secondhand smoke exposure. (CDC tobacco use). The economic burden of tobacco use is also significant. About $100 billion per year is spent in medical expenses and another $100 billion per year in lost productivity. There is no safe level of smoking
Get Smart is a film released in 2008, directed by Peter Segal, that stars Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway as the main characters. The plot of the story is that an organization named KAOS has accrued a stockpile of nuclear weapons and is threatening to use them if their demands for money aren't met. CONTROL, the organization know for always messing up KAOS' plans, has just had their headquarters sabotaged and now all of their agents have had their identity compromised, except for one, agent 99. Not having any other options, CONTROL promotes one of their best data analyst to an agent, this man is Maxwell Smart. With a nuclear bomb threat looming above CONTROL has to send out the only two agents they have left in hopes of neutralizing this
We know this statement and we see this in advertisements, in slogans, in posters and televisions everywhere and yet smoking still the leading cause of death in America. According to Centers for Communicable diseases, 2017, smoking is still the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the United States. It kills more people than infectious disease, abuse, firearms, obesity and traffic accidents. Some people do not believe that smoking is harmful to them. Some people do not notice the harm at first and by the time they notice the effects, they are addicted to it already. That is why the Word Health Organization calls it as “gradual killer”. Lastly, according to Sherry McKee, the director of Yale Behavioral Pharmacology Lab, “Most of the smokers think that they can just quit easily at any time and nearly all believe that they won’t be long-term smokers”. These are some of the knowledge gaps in tobacco use.
Smoking is an expensive habit. People who smoke cigarettes can spend as much as $2,500 a year on them. Smokers’ claim that it helps relax them and it releases stress but the negative aspects of smoking outweigh the positive. Smoking is a health hazard for smokers and non-smokers. Smokers should have the right to choose what to do with their own health but they should respect non-smokers. Many people believe that there are good and bad outcomes from smoking. I believe that smoking is bad and that it should be banned.
Have you ever been in a room full of people who are smoking? Have you ever questioned why they would put their health as well as yours in jeopardy by smoking? Did you ever think smoking could be good for you? Peter Brimelow says just that in his article “Thank You for Smoking…?” In Brimlow’s article, he explains all the health benefits smoking can provide you. Such evidence as that of D.M Warbutton, a British researcher who said that smoking stimulates alertness, dexterity, and cognitive capacity(141). Citing a number of scientific journals, Brimlow has also found that smoking can reduce the risk of developing such diseases as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s,
Thesis Statement: Smoking has many dangerous effects on a smoker 's health and the health of those around them; it harms every organ in the body and leads to premature death.
Smoking tobacco has been a part of American culture since its very conception. Throughout our history, tobacco has been advertised as a simple pleasure for those who seek it out. Whether you are sitting on the porch with a couple of friends or in a dimly lit jazz club, tobacco ads give off a false sense of comfort, power, and success. Until around the mid-1900’s, smoking cigarettes was not considered unhealthy. It was only later that the public realize the detrimental health consequences that came with smoking tobacco. To spread this information, specific advertisements were aired to help inform the public of the dangers of smoking. While these ads have changed over time, the same message and warning still remains evident.