Cigarettes are one of the most additive drugs in the United States today. The addiction to cigarettes is so strong because not only is it just a physical dependence, but it is also a psychological dependence. A cigarette contains many different substances that are very dangerous to ones health. Cigarettes are also a major cause of many deaths in the U.S.
People have smoked for thousands and thousands of years with no real sense of the dangers of smoking. Smoking originated in the 1500's in Europe. Many Europeans started smoking because they thought tobacco had medical benefits. Today, however, there has been extensive research done on smoking and the use of tobacco. Using tobacco has, now, been proven to not help medical problems, but to cause them instead (Cooper).
The federal center for Disease control states that more than eight thousand people die a week due to smoking or smoking related diseases.
Graph showing the differences in blood concentrati...
How tobacco affects your body
Smoking Kills-hyStatistics also show that over four hundred thousand people die a year due to the effects of smoking. Nicotine addiction controls the lives of more then forty-six million people in the United States alone. This number includes about twenty-four million men, twenty-two million women and about three million teenagers ("Smoking" CD-ROM). This addiction is also the most preventable cause of death in the United States and in many other countries all over the world too. It has also been proven that on the average, people who smoke have the chances of dying five to eight years earlier then the people who don't smoke.
However, smoking is not just bad for the health of the smoker, but it is also bad for the health of the people who are around him or her. Secondhand smoke is very dangerous to the people who are close to the smoker. Inhaling a...