Smoking
Essay by 24 • December 17, 2010 • 260 Words (2 Pages) • 1,133 Views
According to studies over 45 million people in the U.S. smoke on a regular basis. Tobacco use is also the number one preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Cigarette smoking is the most common form of tobacco consumption. A single cigarette has around 4,000 chemical that are mostly toxic in it. Almost everyone knows cigarettes are very addictive. But most people don't know or try to ignore the fact that smoking causes multiple types of cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, circulatory disease, and birth defects. Cigarettes contain nicotine, an addictive stimulant. They deliver smoke to the lungs immediately and produce a rapid psychoactive effect. This aspect of their use is both part of what makes them popular and what makes them highly addictive. A lot of things used to make cigarettes most people would not even think of. Methane is gas from sewers and is a very addicting part of the cigarette. Acetone is also found in cigarettes, which is most commonly used in nail-polish remover. Another thing found in cigarettes is DDT which was banned in the U.S. in the 1970's. There are also a lot of sweeteners added to enhance the taste. Second-hand smoke is also a very big contributor to health problems. Only about 20% of the smoke ends up in the smoker's body, which means about four fifths of the smoke ends up in the air for second-hand smoke. Second-hand smoke causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year.
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