Smoking Essay, Research Paper

SMOKING

Teenagers and children shouldn t smoke because it represents a risk to their health. Young people who smoke tobacco have high heartbeats, they have a low tolerance for exercise, and an increase risk of damaging arteries from fatty buildups associated with heart disease. Young smokers suffer the same symptoms of nicotine withdrawal as long-time adult smokers. Seventy percent of teenagers who smoke regret they started.

It has been tested by the U.S. Army that young men who smoke are more susceptible to get injured than the trainees who don t smoke. This study also found that trainees who smoked were more likely to get blisters on their feet when they marched one hundred miles, carrying eighty pound packs.

More teens are using drugs. The percent of teenagers who use drugs like marijuana, cocaine, uppers, hallucinogens and cigarettes increased significantly in the last year. When healthcare professionals have the chance to tell their patients about the hazards and addictiveness of tobacco and other drugs, they miss the opportunity and don t talk about it strongly enough to make their point.

Since store owners want to sell their products, they place ads near candy counters and set ads below three feet, where kids all ages can see them. Researchers also found more tobacco ads in stores near schools than in stores farther away from schools. Most of the stores are breaking the law by not putting a single anti-tobacco sign in the store. Sixty-one percent of people polled said that tobacco companies encourage teenagers to smoke. Eighty-six percent of teens say it is really easy for them to buy tobacco products.

Many people think that black adolescents use tobacco more frequently than white teenagers. Difference between black and white teens use of any kind of drugs is largely due to difference in validity . It has been proof that children in non-smoking homes have good or excellent health. On the other hand, children in smoking homes have poor health. More young people are killed by parental smoking than by any other unintentional injury. 5.4 millions children suffered from non-fatal asthma and ear infections as a result of parental smoking. It has been said that the number of teens smoking will drop if parents themselves quit smoking. Professor Denise Kandel found that girls whose mothers smoke during pregnancy are four times more likely to smoke at the age of thirteen than girls whose mothers didn t smoke. She didn t find the same conclusion with boys.

Study tracks a large increase in smoking among youth. Nearly nine percent of eighth graders said they smoked daily. Fifty-six percent of high school students who smoke at least half a pack a day had tried to quit. They said that now they realize how addictive it is.

According by a study release by the National Center of Health Statistics say that youth is engaging in risk-taking behavior that can lead to a chronic disease, injury, and even death. While young males and females have equal opportunities to experiment tobacco, alcohol or illegal drugs, it has been said that men do it more frequently and at a higher dose. More than half of the youth had smoked an entire cigarette at least once, while another ten percent have taken a few puffs. Males eighteen to twenty-one were more likely than a female to be a current smoker. Fourteen percent of male smokers age eighteen to twenty-one and eight percent of females smokers the same age, say they smoked by the age of ten. A survey of 3,112 children in grades second to sixth found that eleven percent of six graders had smoked a cigarette at least once. Clearly some of these behaviors tend to precede others. The sequence is usually cigarettes and alcohol first, and then marijuana, and then a number of illegal drugs, and that almost all first use has occurred by the time people graduate from high school , commented Lloyd Johnston.

On another survey the conclusion was that nearly half of all students who are current cigarette users smoked on school property. What people need to realize is that the one with the cigarette in their mouth aren t the only ones who could get a terrible disease or die. The passive smoker can also get a disease and die by breathing all the smoke the other one takes out.