Hazards of Smoking

One of the most serious health problems facing our nation is cigarette smoking. Each year, tens of thousands die, and

countless more suffer from chronic diseases, as a consequence of prolonged smoked.

Most smokers develop the habit during their teen years, so this project has been designed to provide information for middle school students specifically.

Tobacco and Nicotine

Tobacco is the prepared leaves of several plants of the nightshade family, used for smoking or chewing as snuff. The tobacco plant is native to tropical America and is now wildly grown all over the world. You can find tobacco in cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and chewing tobacco (snuff). Nicotine is a poisonous alkaloid contained in the leaves, roots and seeds of tobacco plants. It is used as an insecticide and sometimes used in medicine.

Tobacco and nicotine are very harmful substances that have many harmful effects on humans as well as animals.

English: Smoking any tobacco product, %, Females

Dunhill Early Morning Pipe Tobacco, 1990's Murray

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People who chew tobacco are likely to develop problems in the mouth. Tobacco also inhibits antibodies that protect your gums. If you chew tobacco for a long period of time in the same spot in your mouth, it can burn a hole right through your mouth. Tobacco develops sores in your mouth and gives you gingivitis, an irritation of the gums causing puffiness. Even though tobacco models display gleaming white teeth if you use tobacco your teeth turn yellow. Tobacco also gives you oral carcinoma of lateral border of the tongue.

Tobacco does not just harm your mouth but it also harms all other places in your body. Inhaling tobacco can give you lung cancer or respiratory problems. When you inhale tobacco, the tobacco destroys the cilia in your esophagus. The cilia protects you from diseases, so you are more likely to become sick then a person who does not...