How Does Tobacco Use Affect Adolescents

Have you ever heard the term “tobacco”? Chances are you have. We are taught about tobacco as adolescence and the effects it has on the human body. Impacts that are so great it turns our bodies into grotesque machines that run on this chemical. Have we forgotten the photographs of blackened lungs and yellow-brown teeth from our sixth grade text-books? It seems we have. 15.7% of all American teenagers smoke. 5.6% of all American teenagers use a smokeless tobacco products. These numbers are at an all-time low, but don’t you think we can do better? I know we can. In 2013 a percentage of 17.8 adults smoke. About 3.5 percent of American adults use a smokeless tobacco product. Need more convincing? Half of all cigarette smokers’ deaths are caused by smoking. Over 6

Tobacco has been around in the world for over 2.5 million years. It was not until a few hundred years ago when the tobacco industry decided to put these crops into use and conjure up tobacco products for the community. A popular tobacco product in society is cigarettes, as they are cheap and simple to use. As long as one is over eighteen, acquiring cigarettes is a straightforward process for a reasonable price, albeit the sin tax. It was not until recently when cigarettes became widely controversial due to the plant containing nicotine, an addictive drug to the body. Aside from containing nicotine and other hazardous chemicals to the body, cigarettes also cause a whole host of health implications

Although it remains a large portion of the U.S’ economy, tobacco smoking can lead to a variety of diseases and disorders that affect the user. The effects of smoking tobacco not only affect the user but surrounding people as well: permanently destroying their lungs and children, increasing the chances of diseases and of cancer.

Over the last few decades, tobacco and nicotine prevention efforts have risen to an all time high. Prevention efforts focus on education to the public of the negative effects on one’s health when using tobacco and nicotine products, as well as with pleas to healthcare policymakers to increase restrictions on product manufacturing and sales. One policy effort growing in popularity in the United States is called Tobacco 21, which proposes to raise the legal age of purchase for consumers of tobacco and nicotine products to 21 years of age (Farber, Pakhale, & Neptune, 2016). Farber, Pakhale, and Neptune (2016) state that 90% of tobacco and nicotine users begin smoking before the age of 18, with 99% of users starting before the age of 26. Lower smoking cessation rates are associated with earlier ages of initiation and the tobacco industry is known to target youth in advertisement of these products lending to the early age of initiation. The tobacco industry themselves admit that increasing the age allowed for purchase to exclude youth would substantially effect their sales. Tobacco 21 laws also deter adolescents from gaining tobacco or nicotine products from friends 18 to 21 years of age, which is the most likely age group to supply younger teens. With this knowledge, placing tighter restrictions on consumers younger than 21 years of age, using the Tobacco 21 policy, may deter tobacco and nicotine initiation in hopes to prevent individual use at all in the future (Farber

Tobacco consumption is the number one cause of preventable deaths in the United States. In the United States, cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year. That is around one in five deaths annually only because of smoking. On an average, the person who smokes dies ten years earlier than a non-smoker. These statistics are not mere numbers but speak about the gravity of the situation. The United States government should portray a more negative view on Tabaco to save the lives of many people worldwide (Centre for Disease and Prevention, second paragraph).

The article gives information about the nationwide regulation restricting nicotine cigarettes in the U.S in terms of their promising outcomes such as reducing smoking among the youth and several trends of using tobacco-related products in a 10-year period. Furthermore, the authors also point put some possible challenges associated with cigarette withdrawal.

The Institute of Medicine found that children, who are born between 2000 and 2019, would suffer 249,000 fewer premature deaths and 45,000 fewer deaths from lung cancer, when the legal age to purchase tobacco is increased from 18 to 21 years old (atg.wa.gov 2016). Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S, which causes many chronic health complications such as heart disease, cancer, and lung disease (atg.wa.gov 2016). Raising the legal age to purchase tobacco products to 21 in Washington state will decrease the use later in adult life specifically, ages 15 to 17 who are targeted the most through tobacco companies due to their vulnerability and gives loyalty to a specific tobacco company from the addiction of nicotine. Needham, Massachusetts campaigned to raise the legal age to purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21 in 2005 and won. Results are already compelling, showing that between 2006 and 2012 Needham’s high school smoking rate dropped more than half among girls and boys (atg.wa.gov 2016). Given that nicotine can be such an addictive drug and be seen to be used as a coping mechanism, specifically ages 15 to 17 through their developing stages of life, needs to encounter harder access to get their hands on tobacco products. According to the Center of Disease Control, one in 13 Americans age 17 or younger alive today are estimated to die prematurely due to the effects of smoking (atg.wa.gov 2016). Raising the legal age to

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

Linnan and Steckler (2002) describe the following key process evaluation components: Context-aspects of the larger social environment that may affect implementation; Reach-the proportion of the intended audience to whom the program is actually delivered; Dose-delivered-The amount of intended units of each program component that is delivered; Dose-received-the extent to which participants engage with the program; Fidelity-the extent to which the intervention was delivered as intended ( Bartholomew et al., 2011. p.526).

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2014, two-thirds of adolescents 12 or older reported that they drank alcohol in the past year, with 6.4% meeting criteria for an alcohol use disorder.

1. The purpose of the study was to assess in detail, the long-term effects of nicotine exposure on the brain of young adolescents, during which it is not fully matured, therefore are more susceptible to the changes. Because of the neuroplasticity of the brain, exposure at a young age, may greatly impact the development/functions of the frontal cortical regions and lead to changes that persist into adulthood which is why this study is important thus the rationale behind this study was that if greater dependence of this drug is an issue in adulthood, then what kind of changes and declines are we seeing in the cognitive functioning of the brain, as the dependence grows. The hypothesis was in relation to the fact that if this study shows disturbances

How alarming would it sound when your young teen says weed is normal and it’s a way of life….the nightmare still doesn’t end as for most of our parents in NCR it rings a bell only when they face medico legal complications, some medical emergency or sever behavioural issues of their adolescents. This further gets complicated when this notorious cannabis leads to uncontrolled surge of dopamine in the brain and causes very ambiguous mood disturbances with obsessions.

In the study it was hypothesized that as the nicotine dependence progresses it would lead to low positivity in the mood, high negativity in the mood, and higher mood variability. The study also observed whether nicotine dependence in a person changes after increasing the frequency of the person smoking during the course of the study.

Nicotine use is a leading preventable cause of death in the world, directly and indirectly responsible for 440,000 deaths per year. The health problems that result in tobacco use tally an annual of $75 billion in direct medical costs (Slovic 36). That money spent on medical problems for smokers should be used to pay for more important things in our society such as schools, libraries, childcare, etc.

Our results have shown that about a third of intermediate and secondary school adolescents in Madinah, Saudi Arabia smoked. Although the proportion that smoked was higher among male and secondary school students, it remained also alarmingly high among female and intermediateschool students. Further analyses showed that in both secondary and intermediate schools, male smoking outweighed female smoking. A similarly high prevalence of adolescent smoking was also reported in previous Saudi studies [8-10]. The reported overall prevalence rates of adolescents smoking in those studies ranged from 29% to 37%; compared to 33.02% in this study. Smoking prevalence with same patternsof sex and level of education in adolescents was observed in a school based study conducted in Riyadh [9].