Should You Use Tobacco Essay, Research Paper
Should You Use Tobacco?
There are about 1.5 million smokers that are age seventeen or younger. Many
historians believe smoking started with the Native Americans. There are many uses of the
tobacco leaf. Also there are many things to consider if you thinking about using any type
of tobacco. First, one must realize there is illness associated with the use of tobacco.
Secondly, the cost of using tobacco keeps going up every year and often the amount being
used increases. Thirdly, if one is already a smoker and wishes to quit, there are places one
can turn to for help.
The Native Americans used to smoke for different purposes. When the Spanish came
over to America from Spain, they enjoyed smoking and took the idea back to Spain with
them. Sir Walter Raleigh is believed to have started people smoking in Europe. During
World War I, smoking became more and more popular.
In Europe tobacco was smoked, used as snuff, and chewed. Cigarettes started in
Mexico when tobacco was wrapped in corn husks and then smoked. Today there are
cigarettes, pipes, cigars, chew, and snuff. Some stick the snuff straight up their noses.
Tobacco is very addicting. The nicotine in the tobacco is what causes the addiction.
There are many illness that one can acquire from using tobacco. Some of them are
lung, breast, mouth, pharynx, esophagus, and heart cancer. Smoking can also cause
strokes, severe respiratory problems that include; pneumonia, chronic bronchitis,
emphusema, and more. Tobacco causes birth defects, reproductive disorders, stained
teeth and fingernails, wrinkled skin, and bad breath. Cigarettes are a factor in many
automobile accidents. Children who smoke are much more likely to become herion,
cocaine, and crack addicts. Tobacco can even cause death! It kills more than eight
thousand people per week, which is more than 400,000 per year. Second hand smoke
causes non-smokers to have some problems as well. The use of tobacco kills more
Americans per year than alcohol, herion, crack, automobile, plane, and train accidents,
homicides, suicides, and AIDS combined! Each year almost 100,000 Americans die
from lung cancer alone.
Experts have estimated that about twenty-four million men, about twenty-two
million women, and about three million teen-agers smoke. Close to 3,000 teen-agers start
smoking every day. In 1994 Americans smoked about 485 billion cirgaretts. Teen-agers
smoke about one billion packs of cigaretts every year. Americans spend twenty billion
dollars each year to light over 600 billion cigaretts.
There are places for smokers to turn to if they want to stop smoking. Here are a few
of
the agencies; American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart
Association, Smoke Enders. People can turn to hypnosis, filter packs, perscription drugs,
acypuncture, and a few other techniques to stop smoking.
So, after reading the information I have provided, do you want to use tobacco? Do
you
have enough money to support a tobacco habit? Do you want to die early from cancer or
another tobaccco related illness? If I were you, I would say no to all of these questions!
So, what is your answer? Hopefully it is NO!
Arkava, Morton and John Russel, Coping With Smoking, The Rosen Publishing
Group, Inc., New York, 1984.
McMillan, Daniel, Teen Smoking, Understanding The Risk, Enslaw Publishers, Inc.,
Springfield, New Jersy, 1998.