Nicotine Addiction Research Paper

     In the world today, Nicotine is one of the most frequently used addictive drugs. The impact it has on society is like no other. It is one of more than 4,000 chemicals found in the smoke of tobacco products such as cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. This addictive drug is the primary component in tobacco that acts on the brain.

It is the most common addiction throughout the world with 1.1 trillion people smoking currently, consisting about a third of the population over 15 years old. While nicotine is the addictive substance in the tobacco that causes addiction, tobacco will increase health risks of heart attack and vascular diseases. Nicotine dependency is a complex brain disease, and we need to start thinking of it as such. New ways of ingesting this substance have been created, that try to lure and appeal to demographic, particularly younger, to consume nicotine. Regardless of how many years someone has smoked, stopping at any point will valuable and improve your quality of life. Changing the public’s view on addiction is a subject of importance, so many of others can view this as a brain disease more than a personal decision. To fight this addiction, you have to rewire your behaviors in your brain and have a drive to overcome this horrific addiction. The brain can luckily keep changing and be trained to stop cravings with a multitude of different strategies. Anyone can be affected by addiction, we need start treating addicts with evidence-based practices rather than jailing them. Through more education and laws enforced, we can only hope that the number of tobacco users can decrease more and everyone can learn to live a healthier, full life without addiction and the painful diseases that derive from

The smoking habit is the principal cause of illness, disability and death around the world. More than five million of people in the world die due to smoking habit every year. If we don’t take care of this in 2030 the amount will be ten million. Seven million of these deaths would be in poor countries.

The addiction to tobacco, nicotine, and smoking is something the humans have embraced and battled since the early 1800’s. With more and more people falling into the habit and becoming addicted, many detrimental health effects on the body caused people to question what was going on and what was causing these negative reactions in the body. Soon enough, the healthy and “cool” cigarettes that everyone was smoking became the face of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, birth defects, and many other deadly bodily reactions. In the early 2000’s electronic cigarettes (ECs) were developed by a Chinese pharmacist that hoped to allow smokers to maintain their nicotine addiction, but limit or end the harmful and detrimental effects of tobacco on the body, due to his father’s death of tobacco-attributable lung cancer.1 A typical EC consists of a rechargeable lithium battery, a heating tool called an atomizer, which vaporizes a humectant (typically propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and/or polyethylene glycol 400). The humectant contains liquid nicotine. When the smoker inhales, the heating tool is activated by an airflow sensor, and the nicotine is vaporized.1 2

Smoking is a severe health issue which can results in pain, sickness and depression. Not only does the misuses of tobacco and nicotine have a devastating

We have come a long way in terms of health care advancement since the 1900’s. We moved away from the spontaneous generation to evidence-based practice. We have made major stripes in all avenues, especially health promotion, healthy living, and prevention/control of diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), smoking is the leading cause of heart diseases, stroke, respiratory diseases and certain forms of cancer. Over the past 50 years there has been various regulations and law in place to help control these smoking related diseases. Other measures include the limitation of smoking scene in movies, and other television programs. Also the cessation of smoking from public places has lessened the amount of people

Do you smoke, Dip, Snort, or vape nicotine? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should quit nicotine. There are so many reasons to quit consuming nicotine. Did you know nicotine can actually be used as a rat poison? Did you know one drop of liquid nicotine is enough to kill an infant to a child up to 7 years old? There’s no denying the fact that nicotine is poisonous to your body and should be avoided at all costs.

Nicotine replacements and patches are always in advertisements and pushed in stores. While the ads may make it seem easy to quit with a nicotine replacement, they are not actually effective. Recent studies show that smoking cessation drugs like patches and gums do not effectively stop nicotine cravings.

Smoking is the single highest cause of preventable death in America and puts users at significantly greater risk for disease compared to the rest of the population. Tobacco use costs the U.S. more than 289 billion dollars annually in medical expenses and lost productivity (Surgeon General, 2014). The problems associated with smoking are due in part to its addictiveness. Nicotine is the addictive substance found in tobacco and its chemical dependence is as strong as heroin, cocaine, or alcohol (CDC, 2014). Getting all smokers to quit entirely is not realistic due to nicotine’s addictive characteristics.

Nicotine dependence remains a significant public health concern (Rep., 2011). Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of mortality in the United States, accounting for approximately 1 out of every 5 deaths. On average, smokers die 13 to 14 years earlier than nonsmokers. Additionally the estimates for average annual smoking-attributable productivity losses are $96.8 billion and the total economic burden of smoking is approximately $193 billion per year (USDoHaH, 2000). Despite the availability of therapeutic options for smoking cessation, relapse rates remain high (Piasecki, 2006; Pollak et al., 2007). Therefore, there is a need for new, effective, strategies to assist cigarette smokers achieve abstinence.

Lonergan, B. J., Meaney, S., Perry, I. J., Comber, H., Power, B., Bradley, C., & Greiner, B. A. (2014). Smokers Still Underestimate the Risks Posed by Secondhand Smoke: A Repeated Cross-sectional Study. Nicotine & Tobacco

A Tobacco plant is made up of approximately 5 percent of nicotine by weight. There are two categories of tobacco products cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. Nicotine has many effects on the body but the effect it has on the brain is responsible for the so called “good feeling” that is behind the addiction. Nicotine is considered to be addictive because of the psychological and physiological effects on a person. The Center for the Advancement of Health published the results of a study on teenager smokers:

Nicotine, one of the most unusual psychoactive drugs known, and the primary pharmacological agent of addiction in cigarettes, triggers powerful physical and psychological reactions in species as diverse as cockroaches and humans.

Another factor that leads teens to smoke without worrying about future health problems is their mentality of being “invincible.” They think that they will never get sick or that they should not be worrying about an illness that could happen so many years in the future. Studies have shown that this way of thinking is extremely harmful and is

Smoking is not just a bad habit, but also a complex addiction. Experts believe that nicotine exerts its powerful addictive effects by