Quit smoking!
Quit smoking!Quit Smoking!
SURGEON GENERALS WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy. Cigarette smoking has been proven to be hazardous to your health. It wasn’t until 1964 that the actual truth came out about cigarette use. From the years 1952-1956 Kent brand cigarettes was allowed to use a filter containing asbestos. Cigarette ads were allowed on television up until the year 1971, and it wasn’t until 1979 that it was discovered that women smokers could cause major damage to the fetus if they are pregnant. In 1964, the annual Surgeon General’s Report On Smoking And Health reported an overwhelming association between smoking and early death from lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and all other chronic diseases (Payne 2). Smoking has been proven to cause many life threatening problems, therefore cigarette use should not be tolerated.
“The number one killer of smokers is heart disease” (Bailey 135). Not only that but also, “Cigarette smoking accounts for 30% of all heart disease deaths” (Kim and Saltzberg 1). Carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke causes the amount of cholesterol clogging the arteries to rise dramatically. Smoking also makes the walls of the arteries harden which increases the chance for the artery to rupture. Another drug in cigarettes, nicotine, causes your blood pressure to rise, your heart rate to rise, and your heart increasingly requires more oxygen to keep pumping.
Along with heart disease, smokers are afflicted with life threatening cancers. “Cigarette smoking is the major cause of cancer of the lips, tongue, salivary glands, mouth, larynx, esophagus, and middle and lower pharynx”(Kim and Saltzberg 2). Stomach cancer has also been found to be directly related to cigarette smoking. Another cancer that is related to smoking is bladder cancer. In addition to these, leukemia is also directly related to cigarettes. Smoking is responsible for 30% of all cancer-related deaths. The carcinogens contained in tobacco smoke attach themselves to the DNA of the smoker. These carcinogens cause damage to the DNA, which in the long run can cause life-threatening cancer (Bailey 138-139).
There are approximately 53,000 deaths every year as a result of secondhand smoking in the United States alone. “Passive smoking kills one nonsmoker every six and a half minutes” (Bailey 166). The effects of tobacco smoke are just as bad, and maybe even worse in nonsmokers as they are in smokers. The smoke that comes off of the end of the cigarette has been found to be much more harmful than that of the smoke that the smoker is actually inhaling. The particles coming off of the end of the cigarette are smaller and therefore they go deeper into the lung tissue and cause much more damage. When a nonsmoker marries a smoker, the risk of the nonsmoker getting lung cancer and/or heart disease is doubled (Kim and Saltzberg 3). When parents...
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