TOBACCO SMOKING
Among the young people who are of ages 13-15 one in every five of them is a tobacco smoker. This interprets to about 80,000 children who smoke everyday with the continent of Asia having the most of young smokers in the world. In review study done by WHO most of these young smokers are influenced by the advertisement of tobacco in the media. (Harold, 2001. pg 155)
The smoking of tobacco is the only largest cause of diseases which is preventable as well as cause of premature deaths. It is the primary cause of heart disease, stroke as well as chronic lung diseases. It contributes heavily to the cancer of the pancreas, kidneys and the cancer of the cervix. The tobacco smoke consists of more than 4,000 toxic and carcinogenic chemicals which are very harmful to the human body. The survey by the World Health Organization has discovered that 99 percent of women in Britain dont know the link between cigarette smoking and the cervical cancer while another research study show that about 60 percent of adults in China dont know that tobacco smoking can cause the cancer of the lungs while about 96 percent of them did not understand that it can cause a heart disease. It has been established by WHO that of all the deaths from heart disease a quarter and almost three quarters of chronic bronchitis are smoking linked to smoking of tobacco. These diseases related to smoking cost the government of the U.S at least 150 billion every year in its revenue. (Watson Witten, 2001, Pg 17).
Health Effects
According to the World Health Report (2002), thousands of people all over the world die owing to disease caused by cigarette smoking. The most dangerous disease which tobacco smoking contributes significantly is Cancer. (I.e. gastric cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, cervical cancer, along with pancreatic cancer). Studies show that in every cigarette there is a mixture of carbon dioxide and nicotine which usually increases the heart rate of beating and the blood pressure which later constraints the heart as well as the blood vessels. This later develops to heart attacks or strokes where by it slows the blood flow thereby cutting off the flow of oxygen to the hands and the feet. Sometimes tobacco smokers usually end up having their limbs amputated. The carbon monoxide found in cigarettes usually make a person lose oxygen in the brains the muscles as well as the body tissue which generates to the body and mostly the heart to work harder to sustain the persons life. After a while the paths used to pass air to the body swell up thus letting in a very small amount of air in the lungs.
This clearly shows that tobacco smoking is essentially a slow way towards death as deadly diseases such as the heart disease and strokes are unavoidable. There is also the cause of a disease known as the Emphysema which is a disease that rots the lungs of an individual in gradual and slow manner. Those who suffer this disease regularly get the bronchitis in a regular manner and at the end suffer lung and heart failures. (Gordon Eric, 2010, pg 391)
When pregnant women engage in the habit of cigarette smoking they increase the risks of having a child with a low weight and spontaneous abortion. Thus it is important to note that tobacco smoking will eventually have negative effects in almost every organ in the body. The effects which would be named as short term are frequent respiratory illnesses like pneumonia, bronchitis colds and coughs. Children and adults exposed to smoke have a higher rate of asthma, ear infection as well as lower respiratory infections
The long term effects are the causes of COPD chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which is a serious damage of the lungs. (Joycelyn, 2007)
There are additional health risks to women who engage to the habit of smoking in that it increases danger of having the rheumatoid arthritis as well as having a loss of bone density and thus causing increase of fractures in the hip and spine for the women in postmenopausal period.
Environmental factors.
According to the National Research Council (U.S.) Committee (1986), it is a fact that the tobacco business is still thriving and governments in the world are still making enormous profits from the manufacture of tobacco. For example 70 of the price of a pack of cigarettes is the amount of tax which the Australian government gets from its industries. Studies show that its a great source of revenue but also destroys the environment of a country. The Health Department of Australia gives surprising statistics of how tobacco negatively affects the environment. It concludes
Almost 600 million of forest trees are destroyed so as to provide wood for drying tobacco every year.
Countries which dont use wood mostly use coal for drying.
In a country like Tanzania in East Africa more than 25 pounds is used to dry just one pound of tobacco.
A modern industry use up to 3.7 miles of paper every hour for production and packaging of cigarettes.
The tobacco plants use the most nutrients more than all other kinds of plants which eventually degrade the soil productivity.
Massive quantities of fertilizers, herbicides as well as pesticides are used to grow the tobacco crops.
All of these activities usually harm the environment in which we live in and thus at the end affect our daily living. The butts in the cigarettes also affect our environment in that the residue released from them release toxins into the environment and trillions of such butts are thrown away every year. Some studies have concluded that major causes of forest fires in the United States are the discarded cigarettes which sometimes cause very fatal fires. More than a thousand people in America lose their lives annually due to fires related to tobacco (Deanna, 2007 pg 177)
Some pollution in water and land is due to smoking because the chemicals are not confined to the air and the human body alone. Millions of cigarettes butts are thrown and left I the ground and most of them end up in lakes and rivers swept by floods or wind. The fishes and other animals that live in water end up eating these butts which results to death of the water bodies. Those that are left on land usually take long to decompose and it is roughly takes 25 years. This means the chemicals end up being absorbed into the soil polluting the productivity of the soil as well as the other plants. These butts are still the ones which cause fires during the dry periods of the year. (Deanna, 2007 pg 177).
The National Research Council (U.S.) Committee (1986), states that the main impact witnessed in the environment is because of the production of tobacco. This is because the land in which tobacco crops are cultivated could be used for a better reason which is to grow food crops for the developing countries which struggle with shortage of food. Further more a lot of trees are needed to be able to help in the production as well as in packaging of cigarettes. Chemicals that affect the environment have to be used to keep the health of these plants.
This means that the industries need to innovate a more advanced technology so as to assist in decreasing the degradation that we witness today of our environment. If not then the most efficient way is to stop the purchase of such a harmful product both to our health and our environment as well. It may be a bit tough to stop smoking but in long term and for our health and the environment it is of great importance.
Prevention
Education programs.According to Leonard Steven (2002), educating the society on tobacco smoking behaviors has had some positive effects on the prevention measures and attitudes which people have about tobacco mostly the young smokers. Programs that center mostly on influences by the media, peer pressure as well as the family seem to be the most effective when integrated by the health education program by the community. There are various strategies offered by the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) they consist of
Sensitizing the young people, who are vulnerable to smoking and are the great percentage of smokers in the society today with efforts which include the involvement of parents, the mass media and other organizations in the community. This should also include targeting the individual knowledge, social environment, attitudes, and behaviors for change. Such interventions by the community are not enough to bring a decline which is substantive in youth smoking. There is a great importance to combine such efforts with media interventions, the formation of policies as well as the implementation, strong advocacy as well as high taxation for tobacco products. This can generally be very effective.
Restrictions Youth Access There should also be more support in the types of controls put in place to restrict the access of tobacco products. There has been major growth of activities that lead to youth smoking and they should be under restriction. Such interventions of access to tobacco would generally lead to a reduction in illegal sales of tobacco underage students. This may reduce the use of tobacco by the youth in the community. (Joycelyn, 1997)
Tobacco Taxes
If the prices of cigarettes were high enough they would discourage young people from smoking. Such small increase that the government does is not a good deterrent to cub this behavior which has so many negative impacts in the society today. It may not literally reduce the phenomenon but it may be a better option that the increase of taxes in small potions. (Leonard Steven 2002 pg 34)
Anti-Tobacco Advertising
There should be a good strategy for a media counter advertising for the tobacco advertisements. In the U.S the governments is using numerous models in their anti tobacco advertising. For instance in Arizona offers the message to the youth that smoking is neither healthy nor cool to counter the adverts from the tobacco manufacturing companies while in Massachusetts focuses on the health effects caused by tobacco smoking a s way of counter advertise in the media. It is still not well established that such awareness will lead to the reduction and the rate of tobacco smoking by the young people. (Leonard Steven 2002 pg 38)
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2004) In the year 2010 the consumption rate of tobacco in the developed world will be about 29 percent while it will be 71 in the developing countries This is because the demand for tobacco is declining in the developed world which will be 2.05 million tonnes from 2.23million tonnes a 10 lower than the consumed one in 1998.
Furthermore, in the developed countries there has been a strong awareness on how the smoking of tobacco is damaging to ones health in conjunction with the anti-smoking measures laid down by the government which include the prohibition of advertising and increased taxation, how their has been strong negative effect on consumption of tobacco products as well as strengthen anti-smoking campaigns,
Nevertheless more tobacco will be taken to developing countries where it consumptions is anticipated to grow to 5.09 million tonnes by the end of 2010.This is from 4.2 million consumed in 1999.An annul rate of growth of 1.7 between 1998 an 2010 This high demand from developing countries is the one that drives the tobacco economy and this means that to reduce the use of tobacco we should rather focus on demand than the supply in our policy making.
It is also essential to note that Tobacco and poverty are highly related. Numerous studies have proved that in the poorest of homes and usual in countries where there is low income more than 10 percent of the expenditure in the home is on tobacco. This means that there is very little money spent on basic necessities like food, healthcare and education. It then leads to severe malnutrition lack of good health care as well as having premature deaths in the community. It is also a great contributor in the level of illiteracy in a society since most of the money that could have been spent in education the children is all spent on the purchase of tobacco. Unfortunately the role of tobacco in enhancing poverty in the society has always been ignored by many researchers.
Categories:
0 comments:
Post a Comment