Summary: The Influence Of Cigarette Smoking

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“What is this demand for stupefying things-vodka, wine, beer, hashish, opium, tobacco and others less universally used; ether, morphine and mukhomor? Why did it begin and spread so quickly, and why does it still spread among all classes of men, savage and civilized alike (Tolstoy, 1998)”? Smoking is deadly. Smoke contains over 7000 chemicals and compounds, of which hundreds are toxic (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2010). People know about the evils of smoking with health campaigns on a yearly basis, scare tactics and tax dissuasion by the authorities. Yet, the number of new smokers each year in Singapore is on a steady increase. Surely there is something more concrete to their fixation with nicotine that “gayety” (Toystoy, 1998) …show more content…

Children usually watch about 35 hours of television a week (Rothman, 2013) and is exposed to 600-625 potential exposures (whether noticed or not) number of advertisements (Media Matters, 2007). Television and print media normalizes smoking in young people, thus sending the message that because these behaviours are frequent, “everybody does it”. It was found that the influence of cigarette advertisements outweighs the influences of smoking by their close kin and social network, and hence leads to a strong initiation of smoking behaviour. (Armstrong et al., …show more content…

Nicotine is an addictive and by definition of the word, it induces an urge in the smoker to reach for a second cigarette and then a third and so on. Smokers thus experience a continuous high and low blood nicotine concentrations from each round of smoking and hence require constant stimulation from cigarettes. (Jarvis, 2004). The dips in blood levels brings about in them withdrawal symptoms such as light-headedness, irritability and poor concentration to mention a few, and this further induces them to smoke. These withdrawal symptoms are said to be completely alleviated by smoking another

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