Free to Choose, Free to Kill? Analyzing the Smoking Habit in USA

Smoking is an activity that has been around for many years for people to use and adapt into their lifestyle. It is a tool that many people use to help reduce the stresses of life and put them in a comfortable position that enables them to cope with the hectic lifestyle they are living. However, smoking has been scientifically proven to cause many types of cancer, the most common being lung cancer resulting in numerous deaths across the United States. According to BBC, "Smoking is a greater cause of death and disability than any single disease" (BBC, 2). Evidently, the benefits and drawbacks of smoking have been debated for many years, and only recently have some countries have placed a ban in public places such as Britain and the United

The image of how many lives affected by smoking can be a difficult one to capture properly. The image of people who are living their lives slowly becoming the worthless smoke of just another cigarette can cause the viewer, perhaps for the first time, to see clearly that the effects of smoking can go further than they first thought. While lighting a cigarette, it is doubtful the average smoker thinks much about the damage done, not only to themselves, but to those around them as well. Your public service message implies that the second hand smoke the average smoker exhales so easily is just as damaging to those nearby as to the person smoking. This may be difficult to imagine, but the fact still stands that with every puff, with every breath out damage can be inadvertently done to a hapless bystander.

Public smoking has been an issue for people who do not take part in the smoking epidemic for as long as smoking has been around. What people need to understand is that individuals who do not engage in the activity of ruining their lungs are being forced into the act of involuntary smoking rather they like it or not, and that is unacceptable.

According to Erica Frank, “In the United States about 53,000 persons die each year of passive exposure to tobacco smoke…” I choose not to smoke yet I am still exposed. I put myself in the harmful toxic ally of stale cigarette smoke just to eat at my favorite diner. Any amount of cigarette smoke I inhale has the potential to give my lung cancer. Every time I walk down the street past a worker on a much needed smoke break my chances increase. Every decision a nearby smoker makes is putting me at a risk. My great-aunt died of lung cancer. She never smoked a day in her life. My great-uncle passively killed her. He smoked and living with a regular smoker has all the affects as if someone was a smoker themselves. I have the right to be able to breathe clean

One culture behavior that was acceptable years ago but now it is deviant is smoking. In the past, everyone would smoke everywhere. I have personally heard stories from elderly where they would smoke when they were only children. In the past, it was acceptable to smoke but now it is forbidden to smoke in enclosed areas and includes an age limit. This change has occurred because humans have evolved into becoming more knowledgeable. In the past, they did not know how badly smoking affects the body. Today, people know the risk that smoking brings and the news is spread world wide.

The amount of American smokers is at an alarmingly high rate. Each time a smoker has a cigarette their life expectancy lowers. There are many different ways to quit smoking, but many of these methods are difficult to continue doing or are more expensive then continuing to smoke. This needs to change if the nation is going to see a time where less smokers are around. Smoking effects more than the smokers themselves, so to increase the health of the entire nation smoking must be stopped.

While by in large America has a decreasing rate of smoking the south has not reached the same rates of decline as other parts of the country. The problem can be seen through higher rates of lung cancers and other respiratory ailments; the health risk contributes to an increased cost burden on a group of Americans already considered to be poorer than the rest of the country. One possible solution to the problem of US smoking rates is combating it through stronger anti-smoking laws. The government has already reduced rates by limiting smoking in public spaces, and it has proposed to raise the smoking age which could play an important role in decreasing the percentage of smokers in the long term. It is also important to consider the tobacco industry’s

In the United States, cigarette smoking is responsible for about 480,000 deaths per year. This has caused smoking addicts to search for help immediately. Many of them have turned to vaping either vape pens or electronic cigarettes. William Shadel explains how exactly vaping works, “...with an electronic cigarette, nicotine is heated and inhaled through a water-based vapor while nicotine in traditional cigarettes is carried on smoke generated by burning tobacco leaves..”(Shadel,1) . With plenty of doctors, scientists, and organizations looking into vaping, they have successfully found how electronic cigarettes can and have made a difference for daily smokers. Another report made by scientists, researchers, and public health professionals

Tobacco usage and America have a long history with cultivation going far back as 1000 BC. Although, smoking only became popularized in American culture in the past centuries. According to the center for disease control and prevention (CDC) the rise in smoking caused an increase in diseases affecting the lungs, livers, and heart. Smoking is the single most preventable cause of death in the United States (Smoking & Tobacco Use). Three effective ways as a society and a culture we can reduce the overall number of smokers are by getting the government more involved, making e-cigarettes a safer alternative, limiting the public’s exposure to tobacco products by the media, and determine what is making people use tobacco and tailor treatment and prevention

Smoking, sniffing, and chewing tobacco has been around for a long time. “The history of cigarettes, dates back to early 4000 BC in South America.” (Chicago Tribune). Smoking and or chewing took place in many types of rituals and still do today. It wasn’t until Columbus in 1492 brought tobacco leaves to Europe from the Native Americans. From here it spread over Europe and the Europeans brought it to America along with their settlements. From the 1930s to 1950s cigarettes were advertised as physician tested and approved. For example, Jackler for healio.com in the article Cigarettes were once ‘physician’ tested, approved states One of the most famous of the campaigns of this era was the “More Doctors” campaign for RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company’s

While many people are grateful for the marvelous new laws, there are still some who think the Smokefree Air Act is a violation of their constitutional rights. It is not illegal to smoke tobacco, so smokers think that they should be allowed to

Smoking cigarettes does not only affect the consumer, it affects everyone around them. Do people disregard the warning on the box? Cigarettes are taking the lives of people every day, they are death sentences priced at five dollars a pack.Cigarettes deserve to be banned, not to punish those who smoke, but to benefit their health and protect those who do not smoke. Cigarettes kill thousands of people every year, they damage the immune system, and is also harmful to others around them due to secondhand smoke. To begin with, (from Source: Kibin.com) “someone dies every day due to the use of smoking tobacco. There are close to 500,000 deaths every year because of cigarettes, even including non-smokers. 202,000 of those deaths are women and 278,000 are men. If people make the decision to smoke, they are also making the decision to possibly shorten the length of your life. The life expectancy for those who smoke is about ten years less than those who do not smoke, this also varies with the amount that is smoked. If one were to quit smoking by their forties they may reduce the risks of dying from smoking related diseases”.

Tobacco products have been around for centuries, pre-Columbian Native Americans initially used tobacco, they smoked it in pipes and often used it for shamanic rituals. These Natives gave tobacco to Christopher Columbus, who brought it with him on his journey home from America and introduced it to Europe (“History of Tobacco”). From that point on smoking not only became a trend but a lifestyle. In the 19th century machines that could make cigarettes were invented, making tobacco smoking explode in the mass market (“History of Tobacco”). Smoking became so popular if a person wasn’t smoking, they were most likely breathing in just as much secondhand smoke. In almost every nation nicotine addiction was becoming a concern for the health of the general public. Philip Morris, was a scientist working in 1958 went on to publicly speak out that he has found evidence that says heavy smoking can lead to lung cancer. This is when filtered cigarettes came into the picture. Only one percent of

Some individuals smoke inside their own home, which is completely their choice. Entering into a public place while smoking affects complete strangers by forcing them to breathe in the toxins from the cigarette. The smoker has a filter at the end of the cigarette; the innocent bystander has nothing but toxic smoke to inhale. According to Opposing View Points, “To protect nonsmokers from exposure to secondhand smoke, the United States passed laws limiting smoking in public places. During the 1970s, states and cities began requiring nonsmoking areas in public areas and workplaces. Over the next thirty years, many workplaces and public areas became “smoke-free environments,” where smoking was completely forbidden. Regulations on smoking in public vary across states and cities; however, federal law bans smoking in all federal facilities and control smoking on airplanes, which was banned in 1990 for all domestic flights less than six hours long. Today, most flights between the United States and other countries are also smoke free” (Smoking). Before smoking was prohibited in restaurants and other public areas, my family dined at a local Waffle House. My toddler son sat in a highchair in the aisle when a woman walked past our table smoking a cigarette. I remember thinking to myself, “That smoke follows her like

Studies show that people don't just die from smoking, but from second-hand smoke as well. About 40,000 non-smokers die each year from second-hand smoke. It causes lung cancer and heard disease just like smoking does to a smoker, but to someone who doesn't. Do you really think that's fair to the many non-smokers everywhere? They try to separate the smokers from the non-smokers by two different sections in restaurants and other public places, but the truth is that they all know it doesn't work.