Smoking Is Smoking A Lifestyle Or Disease?

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

In the United States, smoking cigarettes is the number one preventable cause of morbidity and death (Bergen, 1999), and accounts for $300 Billion in health care costs and economic productivity loss (Jamal, 2015). While the national smoking rate is 16.8% (CDC, 2016), specific demographics are more susceptible to developing smoking habits: people who live below the poverty line (10.9% higher), disabled or with a limitation (6.2% higher), and males (4.7% higher) (Agaku, 2014).

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.

With many decades worth of health data now available, it has never been clearer that smoking is one of the most dangerous habits a person can engage in. It is no wonder, then, that so many smokers are committed to quitting and improving their health.

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.

According to statistics in the 20th century the world over 100 million people died of tobacco-related diseases. However, the proportion of smokers has not decreased, or even increased due to the limited understanding of the harmful effects of tobacco smoke, knowledge is limited.

According to the Healthy People 2020, each year, approximately 480,000 Americans die from tobacco-related illnesses. Further, more than 16 million Americans suffer from at least one disease caused by smoking. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2012). The effect of cigarette smoking is alarming. Use of tobacco in the form of smoking is not only dangerous to the one who is smoking but also to a non-smoker. Tobacco harms a human physically and mentally. Major cause of lung cancer is smoking. It is important to prevent the use of tobacco because it is the largest preventable cause of diseases and death in the United States. According to Chin, Hong, Gillen, Bates and Okechukwu (2012) Blue-collar workers smoke at higher rates than white-collar workers and

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

For over 50 years, the Surgeon General has been warning about the dangers of tobacco use and smoking. The most recent report, The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General, offers information and statistics related to the monetary costs and physical dangers of smoking. Although the number of people who smoke has declined, if the current rates remain the same, nearly 6 million Americans who are alive today and under the age of 18 will die prematurely from a disease related to smoking. Additionally, half of the people today who continue to smoke will die prematurely due to a smoking-related condition.

Just over a billion people worldwide indulge themselves with a legal substance that has proven too insidiously cause disease or death. Approximately six million people die each year from this legal drug and it is one of the worst threats to humanity worldwide (WHO, 2016). This drug is sold legally over the counter throughout many countries including the United States. The Surgeon General’s Warning, “smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and may complicate pregnancy” was labeled on the packaging of cigarette boxes in the 1980’s. Eventually, launching a national campaign for smoking cessation. Despite the many laws that inhibit the use of tobacco smoke, these products continue to be a legally obtainable substance in the US with devastating damage as a result of their use.

The negative health effects of tobacco use have been well established. Tobacco use has been shown to cause acute and chronic respiratory disease, heart disease, many types of cancer, and is the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in the United States, causing an estimated 443,000 deaths per year (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2004). As the dangers of smoking have become better understood, reducing the number of people who smoke has become a major focus for those interested in public health. Efforts to restrict the advertisement and sale of tobacco, implement public smoking bans, and educate citizens through public service announcements have all had a sizeable effect on smoking rates in the U.S. In Fact, over

Tobacco products are ever so threatening in the United States, where according to U.S. Food and Drug administration 25% of the deaths in men and women age 35 to 69 are caused from smoking related diseases (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2017). This number was even higher among substance abusers and people with mental health problems (Bandiera, Anteneh, Le, Delucchi, & Guydish, 2015, p.1). Even if someone does not die from smoking cigarettes they are at increased risk of contracting an otherwise preventable disease. Due to an exponentially growing amount of people becoming affected with diseases related to tobacco use, the United States government were forced to take action to try and stop the progression of these horrible diseases. These actions have come to no avail, since people who are addicted to cigarettes are not going to stop buying them just because of a price increase. Banning the production and distribution of tobacco products will contribute to a

Cigarettes are the most important substance to address in the United States because they are not only extremely addictive, but they have the potential to cause a variety of serious health conditions and affect individuals who are close to and care for the user. Tobacco use poses a serious health threat especially among the young population of America and has significant implications for the nation’s public and economic health in the future. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the impact of cigarette smoking on the economy is huge. Seventy-five percent of American health care money spent is due to the effects of tobacco causing various chronic diseases. Such diseases include, diabetes, heart disease, cancers, congenital defects, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), stroke, birth defects, etc. “Cigarette smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, causes many diseases, and reduced the health of smokers in general” (CDC, 2015).

An estimated 36.5 million or 15.1 % of adults aged 18 years old and older currently smoke cigarettes and more than 16,000,000 have smoking or live with diseases that are related to smoking. According to US department of health and human services, over the past five decades, there is a significant decline in cigarette smoking in the U.S. The progress has slowed in recent years and the prevalence of use of other tobacco products such as vapes, e-cigars and smokeless tobacco

Because it takes approximately eight seconds for nicotine to reach the brain and each cigarette contains over 4,000 chemicals, tobacco is one of the most addictive drugs in the United States. ("TIPS" 8). Dependency is defined as reliance for a substance that you can't live without. Smokers have a physical and physiological reliance