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Theme Of Smoking In Catcher In The Rye

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In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the vice of smoking is commonly portrayed throughout the entire story. The protagonist, Holden Caulfield, often uses smoking as a form of escape from conflicts he came across, or used smoking to help him deal with stress and to settle his nerves. He tends to rely on smoking for plenty of situations that he is put into and majority of the time, he does not even notice that he is smoking. Holden claims that he barely smokes cigarettes but in reality, he smokes like a chimney. He is addicted to the nicotine that is in the tobacco of cigarettes. This is still a problem in today’s society with teenagers, such as Holden, that smoke because they do not realize how unhealthy smoking may be, as well as how damaging it actually is. Although …show more content…

Marijuana hijacks the normal brain of teens and plenty of scientists believe that it causes permanent damage on the development of the brain. A study showed that regular cannabis users had increased brain activities and although that may seem like a good thing, it actually causes the brain to work harder and has to engage more resources to respond accurately. The earlier and more frequently that a teenager smokes marijuana, the greater chance of the loss of intelligence by the age of thirty-eight. Teenagers who also started smoking early on in their life and had consistently smoked until adulthood can demonstrate a six point IQ drop. In 2002, a study found that the use of cannabis in adolescence can significantly increase the probability of developing schizophrenia in adulthood, especially if the teenager had been smoking the drug since they were fifteen years-old. Teenagers who smoke marijuana are sixty percent less likely to finish high school or get a university degree due to their drug

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