Persuasive Essay Smoking

Most college students cease to believe that smoking marijuana is just as harmful as tobacco or other illicit drugs. In actuality, marijuana has a high level of carcinogens, as well as carbon monoxide, which makes the heart work harder to deliver oxygen to deprived tissues. The same health issues that arise from smoking tobacco such as, emphysema, bronchitis, and other respiratory problems can also be brought on by smoking marijuana.

The way that marijuana cigarettes are smoked- by inhaling and holding the smoke in the lungs creates an even greater risk for exposure to these poisonous chemicals. Other cases are quickly developing that show chronic marijuana users also develop mouth or larynx cancer. If such a drug can cause such devastating health problems, then why legalize it?

Smoking should be banned in Australia. Smoking is a disgusting habit that many Australians use every single day. The impact of banning smoking altogether in Australia would be a massive favour for everyone. Australian adults who smoke everyday and Australian Secondary Students from the age 12 to 17 smoke over 22 billion cigarettes per year and effecting other people to start smoking because they think it’s a cool way to get attention. But I think that banning it in almost all public places is a great idea but I raise this question to you, “Why not just Ban Smoking?” This question was raised in a ‘The Age’ article in 2013. The main point of the article is, smoking is banned in pretty much all public places and there are often neighbours writing to the council complaining about a smoking neighbour, so why not just ban it altogether?

Smoking tobacco is more harmful to your lungs than smoking marijuana. It only takes a couple inhalations of marijuana smoke to become high. Let’s say you’re addicted to cigarettes and smoke a pack a day, keeping in mind that cigarettes are legal. To get high off of marijuana it would only take about a fourth of the tobacco you inhale in just one cigarette, just to become high. When you smoke cigarettes you are continuously inhaling tar, nicotine, and many other chemicals that harm your lungs and may result in lung cancer.

Studies have proven that marijuana is no more harmful to a person’s health than alcohol or tobacco. Every year, tobacco kills roughly 390,000 people, alcohol contributes to 80,000 deaths in America and marijuana contributed to 0; no deaths from marijuana have ever been recorded in US history (Abovetheinfluence.org). When smoking tobacco, the user inhales tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide, and 200 other known poisons into the lungs (Abovetheinfluence.org). All forms of tobacco, including cigars, pipe tobacco, snuff, and chewing tobacco, contain the addictive drug nicotine, and can also cause cancer. Alcohol alters a person's perceptions, emotions, movement, vision, and hearing. Alcohol plays a role in at least 50 percent of traffic deaths, about half of murders, and about 25 percent of suicides (Abovetheinfluence.org). Marijuana side effects include delusions, impaired memory, hallucinations and disorientation, which are no different from the side effects of alcohol alone.

Is smoking a cigarette like aiming a smoking gun to your head? Absolutely, yes! The photo above, has a very powerful message to be shared with people all over the world. The creator of the picture above is, The American Cancer Society. This is an organization that is trying to heighten awareness of the dangers of smoking, the most threatening danger being, cancer. They also promote relays which help raise money for ads and research. The money raised helps to inform people of the dangers smoking and what the negative outcomes of such a habit. This society also helps with finding treatment options. They are helping people cope with the side effects of various cancers or to advise on health insurance. A certain population of people, particularly young people, see smoking as a cool or hip idea to fit in. The goal of this visual argument is to inform people who smoke cigarettes that they should just hold a gun to their heads. The American people should be against nonsmoking because of the feelings you get when smoking, the chemicals that are involved, and how the cigarette will kill like a loaded gun.

Many could argue that marijuana is destructive physically as well as mentally. “The National Institute on Drug Abuse says marijuana can cause heart irregularities, lung problems, and addiction” (Welch). “One joint can be just as damaging to [the lungs] as smoking at least

than tobacco, but drag for drag, it is actually more harmful. Porter believes that cannabis smoke is far more acrid than tobacco and causes more danger to the lining of the airways. Medical marijuana has many drawbacks that may make a person's condition worsen.

On the patients for medical marijuana website I found the next article very interesting. It states that scientists have shown that smoking any plant is bad for your lungs, because it increases the number of lesions in your small airways. This usually does not threaten your life, but there is a chance it will lead to infections. Marijuana users who are worried about this can find less harmful ways of taking marijuana like eating or vaporizing. It is there opinion that marijuana smokers generally don’t chain smoke, and so they smoke less. They also believe that marijuana is not physically addictive like tobacco. The more potent marijuana is, the less a smoker will use at a time. While other articles state otherwise, this one says that tobacco contains nicotine, and marijuana doesn’t. Nicotine hardens the arteries and may be responsible for much of the heart disease caused by tobacco. It also reminds us that research has found that tobacco use may also cause a lot of cancers. This is because it breaks down into a cancer causing chemical called `N Nitrosamine’ when it is burned (and maybe even while it is inside the body as well.) There are currently no cases of lung cancer resulting from marijuana use alone according to this article. They believe the more legal marijuana gets, the safer it is. This article added that researchers were

Nowadays there is a big dilemma to whether legalize marijuana or not and whether marijuana is really a lot more dangerous than tobacco. There are big differences between the two of them, but there is, without any doubt, one that has a lot more negative effects on the human body and the human brain than the other. Due to research we can compare them and conclude which one is worse.

Furthermore, anti-marijuana supporters feel smoking marijuana is just as harmful as having a cigarette. Smoking three marijuana cigarettes is equal to having twenty cigarettes. They also declare smoking cannabis can cause cancer just like smoking a cigarette. There is also a complaint that not only is it harmful for the users, but harmful to anybody else who is around breathing in the secondhand smoke.

Marijuana usually does not contain more than 1 percent of THC. There are stronger drugs related to THC, such as "hash oil", which can contain up to a 28 percent THC level. There have been some cases where "street" marijuana has been found to contain up to 5 percent THC content. That is very potent for normal marijuana, and is probably very hard to come by in the United States. Other countries seem to use different forms of THC related drugs such as hashish, and hemp. Both of these contain more THC than marijuana. As far as long term effects of tobacco and marijuana go, they are about the same. Cancer should appear in the lungs of a tobacco-user earlier due to the amount the tobacco-user smokes in relation to a normal marijuana smoker. There have been many assumptions that marijuana will cause long term brain damage and so on, but, clinically, none of this has ever been proven. In fact, in a college survey, the students who use the drug regularly possessed a higher GPA than those who do not use. This is an entire different subject, but it was interesting to learn.

tobacco and alcohol and also has a much lower risk of abuse (Gahlinger 10). Nicotine,

Unlike tobacco, marijuana has not shown to have a negative impact on the health of those around users (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Coordinating Center for Health Promotion, and Office on Smoking and Health 2006; Pletcher, Vittinghoff, Kalhan, Richman, Safford, Sidney, Lin, and Kertesz 2013).

Many studies have shown that the “more marijuana one uses, the more likely one has the risk of developing head and neck cancer” (Giannasio). This is why marijuana is as harmful as tobacco because the more one consumes it for medical uses or even just as an escape from reality then, the bigger the chance that person will develop head or neck cancer. In addition, “it has been proven that a smoke of marijuana “contains 50%