Essay, Research Paper: Tobacco Use Sucks

Brandon Turnbow
June 14, 2000
Essay #3
Final

Tobacco Use Sucks


By now, almost everyone knows that smoking and other tobacco use causes cancer. But did you know it's also the number one cause of heart disease and emphysema, too? When you smoke tobacco, the effects on your body are immediate. "Your pulse increases. Breathing becomes faster and more shallow. Circulation begins to drop. Poisonous compounds like carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide and ammonia gas enter your bloodstream. Meanwhile, nicotine begins to feed the cycle of addiction. If you're allergic to smoke or susceptible to asthma (and if you smoke, the chances of developing asthma rise sharply), flare-ups and chest spasms can begin quickly. Over the medium term, you become much more susceptible to colds, flu and pneumonia."
The reason for starting tobacco use is usually for social acceptance or peer pressure and the effects of tobacco use are usually negative. People are usually pressured into using tobacco. Who actually wants the negative effects of using tobacco? I know very few people, if any, which think about the consequences before they start, and know very few people who start because they really want to. I've never heard of a story of someone who wakes up one morning and says to themselves," I think I'll start smoking today." It is usually motivated by someone or something.
Social acceptance is usually what sparks tobacco use. Someone that you are close to might use tobacco and you spend so much time around them and want them to like you more so you start. Maybe someone you look up to uses tobacco, consequently you want to be more like them so you start. The sport of baseball has many traditions and one of them is having something in your mouth such as sunflower seeds, gum and more likely tobacco. Activities that we do or participate in cause people to use tobacco. Take the card game of poker for example, the tradition of that is to smoke a cigar. Every picture or painting that we see of a card game has someone puffing back on a fat cigar. An image that is put in our mind entices us to act upon it. Commercials or magazine ads lure people into using their product. This is the reason that tobacco commercials were banned from TV. Too many under age kids were lured into smoking because they thought they were going to become the Marlboro man where they can rope cows and ride horses all day. Some people's reason for starting is because they want to lose weight and instead of eating a Twinkie they can throw a fat hog of Copenhagen in or light up a Black and Mild, either way they are losing weight because they aren't eating as much. Your parents might chew or smoke tobacco and them being your model figure makes you think it is all right to use tobacco.
Are the effects or consequences of tobacco use worth starting? Before you start using tobacco, think of the effects. Imagine going into a room with a relatively attractive woman sitting at the table in the corner, you instantly fall in love with her and are going to go straight up to her and show her how you feel by a romantic kiss. You don't know that she just put out a smoke and her breath reeks of ash, you lay it to her and stop instantaneously spitting as you retreat. The nasty taste in her mouth causes you to go running for the hills and destroys any chance you want with her because of the tobacco use. This example could be a little far-fetched but similar cases could occur.
There are many negative effects that go along with tobacco use, cancer, bad breath, stained teeth, sore gums, becoming sick and puking, and even divorce as the most severe effect of tobacco use. I actually heard a story one time of a guy that wanted his wife to stop smoking because of the smell it was leaving on his clothes and in the house. She didn't stop and one day when she came home from a weekend shopping trip he wasn't there. A couple days later she received divorce papers.
If you have never used chewing tobacco I can tell you from experience it is a bad habit to start. The first time you use it, it burns your gums, makes you dizzy and even could cause some people to puke. I can't understand why someone would want to try it again after the effects they had after the first time. Those examples are the minor effects of tobacco use.
The major effects of tobacco could destroy someone's life in a heartbeat. "Every 13 seconds, someone in the world dies from a tobacco-related illness, and every year tobacco kills: 5,600 British Colombians, 45,000 Canadians, 418,000 Americans (compared to 1,000 Americans who die from cocaine abuse), and 2.5 million people world-wide. A number the World Health Organization (WHO) says will grow to 4 million by the end of the year 2000. More than half of young smokers today, 55 per cent of boys, and 51 per cent of girls, can count on dying from a tobacco-related disease. . . unless they quit."
The statistics show that the probability of encountering an illness due to tobacco use is high. Due to this it would be in everybody's best interest to not start using tobacco or flat out quit the habit all together. In factual reasoning you are basically committing suicide. It is your decision and when you have to make the decision choose tobacco free.