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The Effects Of Smoking On Teens ' Ability On Learning

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Introduction
Smoking has been a controversial topic ever since the 20th century. According to U.S Department of Health and Human, smoking has been recognized as the leading preventable cause of death in the United States in which 443,000 deaths are caused by intended active smoke and passive second-hand smoke each year. In addition, smokers are considered to be more likely to develop many diseases including coronary heart disease, respiratory disease, and lung cancer, and therefore tobacco use costs the country more than “$289 billion a year, including at least $133 billion in direct medical care for adults and more than $156 billion in lost productivity”. Smoking is controversial not only because of its damage to people’s body physically, but also because of the social problems it causes. Some studies have shown that smoking affects people especially teens’ ability on learning. For example Hunter et al. (1986) claims that long-term cigarette smoking reduces adolescents’ reaction time and ability to concentrate, which is believed to weaken students’ learning ability. As a result, it is more likely for those teens that are distracted by smoking and weakened learning ability to drop out of high school. High school drop out is not only a personal issue; it also affects the society in numerous ways. For example, dropping out of high school would result in low lifetime income, and low lifetime income would cause reduced amount of tax the government can collect. If there is
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