The Negative Effects of Smoking

For about two years I had the opportunity to live and work in San Francisco. I was assigned to work with the Chinese community. I had never been to San Francisco before and I didn't know exactly what to expect. One of the biggest differences between San Francisco and where I grew up is the smell. I noticed that no matter where I went in San Francisco I could always smell two things; Chinese food and cigarette smoke. Because I worked with the Chinese people I learned a lot about Chinese food. I remember having learned about cigarettes and tobacco in classes that I had in Jr. High and High school. I also remember seeing those commercials on T.V. that said "Get the truth about smoking" and would often show what smoking does to certain organs in the body. Once they showed an aorta and they squeezed a yellow cottage cheese looking substance out of it and said that this substance was a result of smoking. I thought it would be interesting to research smoking and the negative effects it has and learn just how much damage it causes. In the past century we have learned a ton about smoking and what it really does to the human body.

The first tobacco manufacturing center was in Seville, Spain where early cigarettes were made up of scraps from discarded cigar butts, snuff dust, and pipe dottle, all wrapped in scraps of paper. It was called the "paper cigar" and was considered to be a cheap way to smoke for beggars and those who couldn't afford cigars. After 1800 cigarettes moved to Portugal, Italy and southern Russia. The French began producing them in 1843. British soldiers encountered Russians smoking during the Crimean War and brought them back to London. Sometime in the...