Second Hand Smoking Essay, Research Paper

In the 1950’s and 60’s scientists gave the people a lot of evidence on the

deadly effects of smoking where the tobacco companies on the other hand tried to

put the doubt in people?s minds through the campaigns to show that it is not

all true. By the time people actually decided to take care of their health and

finally saw how life-threatening smoking could be by real life examples, the

tobacco companies already got rich from its sales. Nowadays, nobody doubts that

?firsthand? smoke is deadly to your health and it causes lung cancer and

heart disease in adults and asthma and bronchitis in children. Now the industry

is onto the secondhand smoke. Scientists and researchers are representing a lot

of evidence and research that has been done throughout the years showing that

the secondhand smoke can also cause a lung cancer in nonsmokers. The study has

been done of people who have been long exposed to secondhand smoke and it shows

that 26 out of 33 published studies indicate a link between secondhand smoke and

lung cancer. The study estimates that the people that were breathing secondhand

smoke were 8 to 150 percent more likely to get lung cancer. The tobacco

companies are trying to argue the facts and are still in serious debate about

the health hazards of breathing a secondhand smoke. A lot of anti-smoking

organizations are trying to turn smoking in public into a private activity that

does not have to involve nonsmokers breathing secondhand smoke. What is even

more important is that many of these organizations convinced a lot of smokers to

cut back or quit completely. The problem of secondhand smoke is increasing

because it is so common in our society. It makes secondhand smoke the

third-ranking cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers. Mothers who live with a

smoking spouse have to realize the ill effects of secondhand smoke on children

even before they are born. The smoking components reach the developing fetus

through the mother. Infants that are born in a smoking environment weigh less

and have a weaker chance of becoming a fully developed child. Secondhand smoke

leads to blood clots and damages arterial linings which are the two most leading

factors in the development of heart disease. The tobacco companies got scared of

the effect that the secondhand smoke research can do to the cigarette makers.

The tobacco companies started their own secret studies on how to fight the

growing success of antismoking activists. They are trying to show the people

that there is no definite evidence to prove that the secondhand smoke can cause

lung cancer or any other diseases that the scientists accuse it of. The tobacco

industry is trying to influence the science by commissioning a research from

sympathetic scientists and sponsoring scientific meetings where they try to

carefully bring out their point of view and publish the results in the medical

literature. Only 4 percent of the articles that were published from the meetings

that were sponsored by the tobacco industry said that the secondhand smoke was

unhealthy. The debate on secondhand smoke has reached the boiling point. When

different scientists are using different study designs and different researches

and still come up with the same result, it is time to start paying more serious

attention to secondhand smoke. When the human evidence is combined with the

laboratory experiments showing that the secondhand smoke can cause cancer it is

impossible to ignore it any longer. The nonsmokers should have the right to

breathe smoke-free air. It is important to have restrictions on where people are

allowed to smoke and in particular to keep the work place as a smoke-free

environment. The declining rates of smoking show that people can actually quit.

Everybody should make an effort to quit for the sake of the people they love.