Mrs. Abrams' Virtual Language Arts Class

Teen Smoking

Why do teens and other adolescents smoke? They know it's dissatisfactory, so why try it in the first place? Well peer pressure has a lot to do with it. Smoking is an addiction and when someone stops usually around 9 days they pick up the habit again. Teen smoking should be stopped because it has caused a many deaths. Over 6.4 million adolescents die due to a smoking related disease. Smoking is, in some places, an illegal act that damages one self and others close by.

Causes
Many people wonder what causes other people to smoke. Social influences are the key problem to teen and adolescent smoking. Being influenced by peers do to pressure is the number one influence. Second is being influenced by a parent at a young age. Some children will watch their parents smoke and copy them, usually using a pen. Most kids start at age 13, when they are just starting middle school. Some kids are born "addiction-prone" meaning that their mother smoked when they were pregnant with the child. People say that smoking relaxes the body, that it’s cool, and that it brings relief to them. Watching an older sibling smoke is a major influence because younger children look up to their elders including brothers and sisters.

Effects
True or false? Lung cancer has been around for forever. False! 50 years ago lung cancer was rare and was hardly a problem, but now that teens and adults smoke lung cancer is seen every day. Smoking causes a egregious amount of effects to the body other than lung cancer. It might cause heart disease, chronic lung disease, memory problems, nausea, restlessness, loss of appetite, and your heart beats 60% faster than a normal heart. Smoking also makes you look monotonous and decelerate along with being confused. First time smokers don't get high right away but regular smokers suffer ill effects. Smokers aren't the only ones hurt; the people around smokers are harmed too.

Types
Pipes, cigarettes, and cigars these are the main substances used for smoking. Cigarettes are made from shredded tobacco, left from making cigars, and rolled into a tubular procastinate burning device. Cigars are made from taking a tobacco leaf and rolling it up into a cylinder form while on the other hand pipes are exasperated out of cutting tobacco up and putting it in an end then is smoked up a tube connecting to the mouthpiece. A cigarette includes tobaccos, which there are 60 kinds of used in drugs and more. There are three main drugs that are around you everywhere in the world. To start with, tobacco is a drug that when associated with an adolescent gives a range of health-compromising behaviors. Such as: getting included in allot of fights, wanting to carry weapons, and high-risk sexual behavior. Next, there is marijuana, a drug made from a hemp plant, which is also called "Mary Jane", "pot", and sometimes "grass”. 400 chemicals are in the marijuana substance. Not least but last, nicotine. Nicotine is more of the thing that causes addiction that being a drug itself. Nicotine has two important things in commercial manufacturing nicotine tobacum along with n. rustica. These aren't the only things smoked by adolescents. Stuff like heroin, morphine, codines, opium, methadone, barbiturates, methadqualone, mini tranquilizers, cocaine, and amphetamines were and still are used too.

A little history
Cigaretts became popular in the mid 1800's. Believe it or not stuff like pipes were used over 1600 years ago. These pipes were even used by Mayas and Mexican priest. Europeans didn't only come over from Europe to be free; they came to also find land for growing tobacco plants. When searching they found the present day states Maryland, Delaware, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, And South Carolina. Soon tobacco industries were making over 120,000 cigarettes a day but only trained people could make them. An interesting facts is that tobacco can be made as far north as Norway and Canada and as far south as Argentina. Tobacco was first grown in France in 1556 and in England in 1558. These are the substances that harm adolescent smokers.

Surveys and percents
Numbers, numbers, numbers. Numbers could describe teens and smoking alone. First, we should talk about middle school students. In 1999 15% claimed to be using some form of drugs at least once a month. Cigarettes were most common with the smokers, then cigars. Second, we should chat about high school students. In 1980 there was a survey that said 60% percent of all high school students had tried marijuana before. In 1997 37% of high school students smoked. Currently 28.5% smoke now. In 1999 2/3 of high school students had tried smoking (70.4%) but in 2001 63.9% had tried it, almost 6% lower. In 1999 17% of high school smokers smoked regularly but in 2001 14% frequently smoked. In 1980 2/3 of high school smokers used illicit drugs. 93% claimed that they had tried alcohol. 7% made the right decision. It is a fact that males smoke more than females because men have been smoking the longest. Of high school smokers 25% were males that smoked cigars while 10% were females that smoked cigars. 6000 adolescents (under 18) try smoking every day, 2000 of those kids become regular smokers. 4.5 million (US) adolescents smoke cigarettes. 90% of them smoked before age 21. 20% of 12th graders smoke, 12% of 10th graders smoke, and 5.5% of 8th graders smoke. If you smoke 100 cigarettes it feels impossible to quit. A teen smoker has just a impenetrable time of quitting as an adult smoker. Adolescents are chief support in tobacco industry. Clinics are helping to bring down these high rates.

Treatments
Are there people who want to help smokers quit? Is there a substance that helps reduce the smoker’s nicotine? Yes, and yes. Nurses, psychologists, and physicians all help smokers attempt to quit. A nicotine patch gives a steady amount of nicotine through the skin into the body to reduce risks. Also detoxification is a substance that rids the body of poisons or the effects of poisons. In 2003 the % of clinics helping addicts was 21.6, in 2005 it was 25.2. States are trying to prevent smoking and now Kentucky with 27.6%, Virginia with 26 %, and Oklahoma with 26 % are the leading states in preventing smoking. Sadly Utah with 10.5%, California with 14.8%, and Idaho with 17.5% are doing the worst job of preventing teen smoking. There are proficient programs that help reduce smokers like ACS Guide Materials for Teens Against Tobacco, and ACS School Health Initiatives, and ACS Comprehensive plan for community control. If you let a child smoke the will have a supereminent chance of getting lung cancer. Those were only some. 6.4 million teens and kids die due to a smoking related disease. Smoking must be stopped.

Now people can see that peer pressure is not the only reason for smoking teens. That lung disease is not the only symptom. Or how many teens smoke, what they smoke, and why it’s reprobate. Even that cigarettes aren’t the only drugs used by adolescents or that there are treatment centers for addicts. The most important thing learned is that smoking is, in some places, an illegal act that damages one self and others close by and has a consummate deal of effect on the world. So help stop it before even more adolescents get hurt.

Where all of this information came from- the book Addiction by Gilda Berger (1982), the magazine Atlanta Journal Constitution the article “smoking rate creeps down” (2006), the encyclopedia Collier’s Encyclopedia number 21 (1997), the web page www.health.yahoo.com/centers/smoke_free/17 by yahoo inc. (2006), and the website www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvluk9o0E&b=39868 by lung association (2005). NOTE TO OTHERS! If you know someone that is smoking or may start smoking please contact the nearest addiction center to help stop their addiction. Teen or adult, no matter the age, they need you.