Smoking - Truth Behind The Smoke

Truth Behind the Smoke

"Tobacco use continues to remain the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, causing more than 400,000 deaths each year and resulting in an annual cost of more than $50 billion in direct medical costs (Ekman). This is a disturbing figure, which despite the knowledge on the issue of smoking, only continues to grow with time with over 50 million Americans continuing to smoke each and every day (Warner,142). This problem is not only delegated to the adults and parents but to the teenagers as well. Youth smoking is rising at an alarming rate with more than 45 percent of high school students in 1999 reporting that they have tried smoking a cigarette or smoke them on a regular basis (Ekman). In this paper I will be looking at some of the causes of this national epidemic and what can be done to combat such a horrible addiction.

"Each year smoking kills more people than AIDS, alcohol, drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides, and fires combined!" (Ekman). So what is the appeal to begin such a deadly addiction and why does the youth begin tampering with such a known killer?

There are no hard facts as to why the youth of this nation begin smoking. It could be a variety of factors. One such factor could be blamed on the tobacco companies and their advertising for targeting the youth of America. "Less than one third of smokers start after age 18" (Thompson). With facts like these the tobacco companies know that if they don't acquire a new smoker who is 18 years of age or younger, the chances of them ever becoming a smoker for a long period of time, goes

down by over 66 percent. Along with this obstacle, tobacco companies must also gain at least a 1,000 new addicts a day to compensate for the 1,000's that die each and every (Wells).

In an attempt to best understand why teenagers start smoking tobacco, agencies have been known to conduct market research studies. These studies give them a better understanding as to why and give them ideas on how to market the cigarettes toward the youth. In one such market research project conducted for the Imperial Tobacco Company, they revealed that the age that a person started smoking cigarettes ranged from 14 to 18 years of age and was entirely social and dependent on perceived peer group pressure (Thompson). This market survey also revealed that once the addiction to nicotine has taken place, the addict must come to a realization of the dangers and deals with them through rationalization. With these facts in mind, the tobacco companies are careful to advertise to youth 16-20 years of age in commercials targeting fun and social activities.

In a personal interview that I conducted with Niki Nonamacher, a long time friend of mine, when asked why she started smoking cigarettes her reply was, "I was outside of a party my sophomore year in high school with one of my girl friends who was smoking. In the middle of our conversation she pressured me to take a drag. I was uncertain at first but it was there and I was curious, so I tried it and got hooked" (Nonamacher). When asked why, with all the knowledge and anti-smoking advertising that she has been exposed to, does she still continue to smoke, she became agitated and bluntly stated that it was because she wanted to. She then firmly stated that if she really wanted to stop smoking she could at any time. Now I have known Niki for several years and she has stated that she was going to stop smoking cigarettes many times, but time and time again she has fallen back into the unhealthy snare of her addiction (Nonamacher).

Just like my friend Niki, "Approximately 80 percent of adult smokers started smoking before the age of 18. Every day, nearly 3,000 young people under the age of 18 become regular smokers" (Ekman). Over 6,000 adolescents try their first cigarette each day. This makes up for over one million kids in the United States every year (Jacobson, 46).

So what is so enticing about this known killer to all of the youth in America? Since the release of the first Surgeon General's report on smoking the knowledge on smoking has grown enormously but people are still continuing to smoke, causing damage to their health. "Even after one single cigarette, damage to the lungs can be detected. The smoke is inhaled and taken into the circulatory system causing damage to the heart and blood vessels" (Terry, 32). There are also over 250 known dangerous chemicals in tobacco smoke which are known to cause various types of cancer in humans and even animals.

With all of the activities that the young people love doing, why do they risk such severe physical damage to their health? "Some of the short term health side effects of smoking cigarettes include damage to the respiratory system, addiction to nicotine, and the associated risk of other drug use" (Ekman). A multitude of today's youth love doing physical activities such as basketball, football, swimming, and track. But if they choose to smoke, it has been proven that their physical fitness in terms of both

performance and endurance, no matter how trained or physically fit they are, will be damaged and hindered significantly. A non-smoker student's heart rate is about two or three beats slower than the average smoker. As a teenager, we all have an attitude of indestructible nature, but the single decision to pick up a cigarette as an adolescent will damage our health immensely and thus will prematurely kill five million kids living today (Ekman).

The smoking trends among women are also rising at an alarming rate. The first advertisement that was directed particularly at women appeared in the 1920's in North America and the United Kingdom. With WWII raging, the transformation of women into the labor force deemed smoking normal and acceptable among young women (Greaves, 9). When the trend of smoking became socially acceptable, women then opened themselves up to the tobacco industry. They have been barraged with images of beautiful women on television and in magazines smoking cigarettes and in return getting any man they want. All of these images are being received by young females and the desire to live these fantasies is a major reason as to why young women began smoking.

About one in five women smoke and about 30 percent of female high school seniors said they had smoked in the previous month. This is an incredible increase from the early 1990's. One of the biggest campaigns to target women in the past was the 1960 Virginia Slims advertisements which had the phrase, "You've come along way baby" (Ekman). Advertisements like these were designed to feed off the independent women spirits making it appear as though smoking