Long before the cigarette, there was tobacco. Within American culture, there is a centrality that is incredible for its longevity and the elasticity of its products and intention. Tobacco was first cultivated by American Indians. It was used as snuff as long ago as 100 CE. But the widespread use of tobacco began in the 1500’s and it quickly spread from America to the other countries of the world (Bailey, 5).
By the time the modern cigarette was invented near the end of the nineteenth century, tobacco had insinuated itself into the United States economy and culture.The cigarette quickly transformed the entire tobacco culture. The invention of the cigarette transformed the entire tobacco industry and became the main vehicle to recruit and maintain new users (Brandt, 19). By now, everyone knows that smoking is dangerous, with only tobacco executive and salesmen in denial, or at least professed denial. As defined by the American Psychiatric Association, the use of cigarettes and other nicotine products is the reasonable definition of substance dependence.
Symptoms include tolerance, the use of the product to relieve withdrawal symptoms, failed attempted to cut down or quit using the product, and continued use despite the known, harmful effects (Smoking: Current Controversies, 58). People just cannot seem to quit. Teenage Smokers “When [children] become early teenagers, the addictive industries claw at them in such subtle and nonsubtle ways – tobacco, alcohol, drugs. Four-hundred and twenty thousand Americans died last year from tobacco-related diseases. Most of the smokers are hooked under the age of fifteen.
Talk about child molesters. ”Ralph Nader (Frank, 870) The Center for Disease Control (CDC), indicates that approximately eighty percent of adult smokers begin smoking before the age of eighteen and three thousand children a day become smokers (Smoking: Current Controversies, 12). Despite the fact that the number of overall smokers is decreasing, decrease in teenage smoking is slowing, worrying health experts. The most common reason given by teenagers for why they started smoking was peer pressure: something that everyone else is doing (Burton, 3).
On average, teens smoke approximately twenty cigarettes per day (Bailey, 53).Although tobacco companies claim they do not target teenagers and young adults, their advertising is geared toward recruiting teenagers. By portraying cigarette as glamorous and rebellious, they are attracting a younger crowd. One advertising executive indicated to a tobacco company, in the young smoker’s mind, smoking falls into the same category as wine, beer, or shaving – a declaration of independence and the search for self-identity.
The executive advised the company to present the cigarette as the only passage into the adult world (Smoking: Current Controversies, 13).In response to concerns about the effect of smoking and tobacco advertising on children and teenagers, the tobacco settlement was reached, which created the most stringent limitations on tobacco yet. The main aspects of this settlement include banning cartoon characters in any advertising, sponsoring brand name events with a significantly youthful audience, and billiard and sports arena advertising. Tobacco companies are also prohibited from gearing their marketing toward minors or in publications with mostly youthful readers and they are forbidden to give away free tobacco-based products (Smoking: Current Controversies, 13).Some believe these measurements are too lenient while others think this is a good start on curbing the problem of teenage smoking.
Tobacco related illnesses strike more often and more severely smokers who begin early. The risk of dying from lung cancer is greatest among smokers who began before the age of fifteen (Bailey, 143). Of all the teenagers who become daily smokers, approximately one-third of them will die from smoking related illnesses (McCook). Another important step is to begin enforcing both federal and state laws which inhibit minors to purchase tobacco products.A recent study found that by enforcing these laws, there was a marked decrease in underage smoking, reducing the odds of 10th graders becoming daily smoker by 20.
8 percent. This is the first national study which showed that strict adherence to these regulations had any effect on teen smoking. Some skeptics argue that underage smokers will always be able to get their cigarettes from somewhere (“Enforcing Bans on Cigarette Smoking…”). Data indicates that by increasing compliance of enforcement of this law by twenty-five percent reduces underage smoking, on average, by the same amount and a two dollar tax increase.Enforcing this law is a strong deterrent to decreasing teenage smoking; however, it should be used in conjunction with increased tobacco tax as a deterrent, not in place of (“Enforcing Bans on Cigarette Smoking…”).
Health “The top executives of the seven largest American tobacco companies testified in Congress today that they did not believe that cigarettes were addictive, but they would rather their children did not smoke. ” Philip J. Hilts (Frank, 869) One of the most important “discoveries” of the centuries was the determination that smoking causes serious diseases and illness.Up until that time, people across the world were using tobacco products without realizing there was a serious health risk. Studies found that a distinctive rise in smoking correlated the tripling of the number of lung cancer patients over the same period. Due to the tobacco industry’s influence, accepting this realization as fact required many more years of study (Brandt, 106).
Smoking causes various kinds of cancer, including lung and tongue cancer, and it is a leading cause of heart disease and heart attacks (Bailey, 137).The relative risk for heart disease and heart attacks is 280% higher among smokers versus non-smokers. Even is the smoke is not inhaled, tar and nicotine get absorbed in the blood stream and are carried into the heart. Cancer is caused by the affect smoking has on the body’s DNA. Tar destroys certain “cancer protecting” genes and allows for unlimited cell growth, which is the breeding ground for cancer.
Other components of cigarettes such as carcinogens, destroy certain protective DNA and causes issues with the heart, lungs, liver, skin, spleen and kidney (Bailey, 139).The fact that second hand smoke can also be deadly was the result of an epidemiologist trying to convince his wife to quit smoking. He set out to prove that the smoke was harmful to him as well (Smoking: Current Controversies, 16). Smoking damages the body, invisibly and gradually, but it is damaged just the same.
The American Council on Science and Health has heavily documented this fact (Smoking: Current Controversies, 44). No matter how insidiously smoking becomes a habit or how few cigarettes a person smokes, there is no “safe” number of cigarettes.Even one cigarette a day increases the risk for lung cancer (Bailey, 132). Combining the number of deaths from World War I and II, the Vietnam War, AIDS, cocaine and heroine still does not equal the number of deaths due to tobacco.
Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States, accounting for thirty-eight percent. One out of every five deaths is caused by smoking. Smoking related illnesses will kill nearly forty percent of smokers (Bailey, 134).
