Nowadays children and adults are trying smoking more than ever. Statistics show that In the UK 450 children start smoking every day. Which is terrible because its just like prolonged suicide like covering yourself in paint and letting all the toxins in through your skin but, your killing your friends as much as you if not more. This is wrong but people have a fascination with stretching the law especially in children. They have to see how they can push the law or to look cool and fit into a group. The strangest thing is that 80% of smokers take the habit up as teenagers and find it really hard to give up even when they want to.
In the early 1900s women weren’t aloud to smoke at all. The woman who dared to smoke in public, even at the time of the War, risked social disapprobation. Early sightings of a woman with a cigarette apparently attracted outrage, the adoption of a masculine behaviour signalling loose morals. The social changes of the 1920s brought women a greater degree of freedom, and smoking became openly practised among the young and fashionable. During the 1920s in the United States, women in colleges commonly smoked as an explicit statement of their equality with men (although more recent research has shown that the connection between female smoking and views on sexual equality is no longer consistent).
You would think that women would have the sense to not start smoking but they did. It all started as Through the 1920s and 1930s more women entered the workforce, and having their own income, were better able to afford to smoke. Around this time, cigarette advertising also became more directly aimed at women (see Section 16.6 below), which doubtless increased smoking is desirability and acceptability to women.
The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 brought many societal changes. Smoking among women became more widespread, probably due to the leap in numbers of women in both the civil and military workforces. By the end of the Second World War, 26% of adult women smoked, around the same prevalence shown by the most recent national surveys. By contrast, men's rates have more than halved since the Second World War. A parade was designed to change the negative perception of women smoking cigarettes and turn it into an act of liberation for them. Strangely enough cigarettes now became looked at as "The Torches of Freedom", as the event was poetically named. Ten debutantes were paid to walk down Fifth Avenue in New York with lit cigarettes while the pre-warned media took their pictures. Bernays PR stints tore down barriers, which people had over women smoking in public places, making Lucky Strikes cigarettes, the fastest growing brand in the country. This event marked the first time women smoked openly on the streets. During days following the event women were seen smoking on the streets all across the nation.
With Bernays help, the tobacco industry convinced a generation of women to light up. His next public relations scheme was to play on women’s historical fear of fat. The genius marketer persuaded weight-conscious women that a cigarette was just the thing to substitute for a sweet. He highly publicized Lucky Strike’s slogan "Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet". Largely supported by the medical community in his claims, Bernays created the imagery that impacted the nation from Hollywood to Wall Street. And he did it all without anyone knowing his client, The American Tobacco Company, was behind it. One of his main tasks was to daily discredit new research linking smoking to deadly diseases. Bernays was successful for many years refuting claims that smoking was a risk to health.
However it wasn’t long before the tobacco industry had to admit the link between smoking and serious illness. In America, smokers took the tobacco companies to court, demanding money for the damage caused to them through smoking. They argued that the tobacco companies misled them into thinking smoking was not a risk to their health, but something that is glamorous.
“Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette),” Written by Merle Travis for Tex Williams, was a national hit song. It was used to glamorise and sell cigarettes, along with the lyric “Puff, Puff, Puff, and you’ll smoke yourself to death” was later used as defence in a litigation cases against the tobacco manufactures. If even tobacco industries admit that smoking is bad for you why on earth would you start in the first place?
Given the facts about smoking that we know today about smoking its difficult to know why anyone starts. They are basically killing themselves and the others around them through passive smoking. The statistics today show that the NHS has to spend £1.5 million on smoking related illnesses each year. They have estimated that 1000 million people will die from smoking in the 21st century. The other thing people don’t know is that the drug in cigarettes, nicotine, is just as addictive as heroin and cocaine. It would be unacceptable if you saw people walking around injecting themselves with drugs but we let smokers pollute our air. The smokers are worse than the heroin addicts because smokers are killing the people around them through passive smoking. Deadly or what, non-smokers don’t get the chance to say no.
Children who are regularly subjected to passive smoking are more likely to perform poorly in school, American researchers have claimed. Scores in numeric and literacy tests are likely to be lower among children exposed to passive smoking at home than those who do not, according to a study by the US Children's Environmental Health Centre team. Based on data gathered between 1988 and 1994, the results have prompted the centre to step up its campaign for a ban on smoking in public places. Even those children who experienced only a modest increase in exposure to smoke suffered a significant drop of around three points in literacy tests and two points in numeric tests. In UK, the government is likely to use these results as part of its drive to ban smoking in public places, while pressure groups are set to argue that the statistics provide evidence that smoking around young children should also be outlawed.
Researcher Dr Kimberly Yolton said: "This study provides further incentive for public health standards to protect children." However everyone is at risk from smoking, directly or indirectly.
More people in the UK die from smoking every year than any other single cause. But that’s not all, if people didn’t smoke we would all be better off not just healthier. There’s no doubt about it, cigarettes are expensive. In a survey it show if a 15/16-year-old smoker smoked 20 a day. They could have bought a luxury yacht when they were 50 if they hadn’t started.
Lung cancer as a cause of death has grown 5 times faster than other cancers since 1938; behind stomach cancer, it is now the most common form of the disease. Medical evidence as far back as the, Sept. 30th 1950 British Medical Journal, a study by Richard Doll and Bradford Hill, found that heavy smokers were fifty times as likely as non-smokers to contract lung cancer. The cost to the NHS and the taxpayer is enormous. Today we see the warning signs on the packets of cigarettes but it hasn’t always been like that. Before 1970s there wasn’t warnings on the packets but in 1974 the manufactures put warnings on the packets, which later became law. In 1981 even insurance companies would give non-smokers lower rates because smokers were seen as high-risk clients. More needs to be done to lower this burden on the economy, and encourage people not to smoke or stop.
In today’s society two thirds of smokers in our time want to stop smoking, there isn’t a better time than now because the sooner they do the better. In public places in the Republic of Ireland it is illegal to smoke already and the sooner it catches on over here the better.
“SMOKING SERIOUSLY DAMAGES YOU AND OTHERS ROUND YOU,”
Caption taken directly from a cigarette packet. My advice is “DON’T START YOU WON’T LIVE TO REGRET IT!”
