Cigarette Smoking

The culture and history of cigarette smoking dates back many years, even before World War I. According to the global smoking statistics that was released by the World Health Organization, one in every three male adult smokes cigarettes. Similarly, every one in five teenager of ages 13 to 12 smokes cigarettes globally. The specific facts about smoking are not only startling but also worrying. The causes and effects of smoking has been a subject that has elicited different reactions from scholars, academicians, and medical experts alike. Even though there is no apparent trigger that causes smoking, different experts, academicians, and scholars have tried to explain this. First off, peer pressure plays a vital role in leading people into smoking, especially teenagers. On the other hand, those teenagers and children who start smoking at a very tender age have grandparents, parents or older siblings who smoke. Benner  argues that such children or teenagers start smoking so that they can feel or look like their relatives or friends. Other people, especially children and teenagers start smoking as act of defiance or rebellion against people of authority or their parents. Other people start to smoke because of low self-esteem, behavioral problems such as aggression, poor social or financial background, poor academic performance, and lack of education past high school. Benner asserts that this group of smokers engages in the act because they want to fit in a particular cohort or group. Such smokers usually believe that if they start smoking, they will be accepted in these groups. A big number of new smokers do it just for experimental purposes. It is believed that such smokers usually try to find out how it feels or what all the fuss about smoking is all about until they are addicted. Last but not least, cigarette electronic media among the leading causes of smoking. Many people smoke because of an advertisement he or she saw on T.V or through other mass media. Likewise, some people start smoking after seeing their pop star and film star smoking. It is believed that mass media depict smoking as being cool and sociable. Whatever the reason that people start to smoke, it is now clear that the consequences are dire. According to (Slovic 78), smoking is the chief agent of premature and avoidable death globally. It has been proven that smoking acts as the main catalyzing agent in chronic airway obstruction, heart diseases,, and lung cancer. It is asserted that both adult male and female cigarette smokers reduce their life expectancy by 13 to 14 years. As compared to other ailments, it has been established that cigarette smoking causes more death than HIV, suicides, vehicle injuries, alcohol use and murders combined. As compared to none-smokers, smoking cigarettes increases a person’s health risk. It is estimated that smoking increases the chances of the user to develop coronary heart disease twice, developing lung cancer by 13 to 23 times, developing stress by 4 times, and succumbing to chronic obstructive ailments such as emphysema and bronchitis by 13 times. Smoking also affects the reproductive life of the consumer. The risk of being infertile, having a still birth, and giving birth to low weight infants are high in smokers than in non-smokers. Considering the above effects of smoking cigarettes, would be smokers should be warned, whereas practicing smokers should quit before it is too late. This is the only way that the sustenance of the future generation can be assured. Note that smoking is not a leisure activity, but suicidal to all those who engage in this activity.