Smoking - Human Awareness Essay

Smoking has always been a topic on everyone's lips, is it the new age killer or is it just coincidental that most cancer and heart disease victims are smokers? The articles that this essay is based on refer to issues such as "surgery being banned on so called 'fat' people and alcoholics" and "transplants useless as they don't listen to doctors anyway"

It seems that doctors and surgeons don't want to or won't operate on patients who haven't helped themselves to begin with. They say that the non-smoker is going to make more use of the lung, while the smoker will just kill it off, and this is what people are battling against today.

Even to this day you still get the teenagers who think it is cool to smoke and that it is a fashion accessory to their outfit, but when it comes down to it smoking really is an individual, social and global act that effects us all. It has major social relevance as it is seen everyday and is in our faces 24 7 to put it lightly. Smoking has come a long way to having the adverts on television banned, the age of smokers risen and even designated areas assigned for smokers and you cant help but ask yourself "Has it really gotten to this stage where it has to affect us Globally aswell?" the answer is yes.

Research has shown that you do not have to be a smoker to have 'Smoked'; Passive smoking is also a factor that comes into it. A year or so ago a lady in Australia sued her company due to the fact that she developed cancer of the throat due to smoke inhalations, but the catch was she was not a smoker herself and this disease was the work of her being employed in a bar/restaurant where smoking was allowed, and this is why smoking has become a Global affect, affecting us all individually without knowing it. Second hand smoke is what we pick up from the thousands of smokers on the streets or in our homes, the same 2000 harmful substances that are inhaled by smokers are inhaled by us aswell and consequently 50,000 people die from second hand smoke.

Each Cigarette contains Tar, Nicotine, Carbon Monoxide, and many other toxic substances. It is fact that smoking gives you twice the amount of risk for getting cancer; you could develop cancer of the Lung, Larynx, Mouth, and Esophageus. What the smoke does is it destroys the Cilia in your Respiratory Tract so there is constant coughing. It is known that 50% of cancer victims that go in for Surgery of the Lungs do not make it and it is mostly due to the fact that their Lungs aren't strong enough to cope with the operation in the first place and they basically give up.

Surgeons all over the world are refusing to operate on some Heart disease patients due to the fact that they haven't given up smoking prior to their operation.

A 56-year-old man died at the Royal Melbourne Hospital after he was sent home from surgery as he hadn't quit smoking, his surgery was delayed and consequently he died.

Doctors have been accused of bordering on "Moral Fascism" as smokers have been denied vital operations; the patients are saying that they had no reason to quit, as they weren't told to and that they shouldn't be denied the right to their operation based on the grounds of "To quit or not to quit".

Some patients are staring to agree with the doctors saying that a smoker who has a transplant and hasn't yet quit smoking is basically "wasting" their chance of a new life and another victim being 'non-smoker' in need of a Lung transplant will make more use of the lung while a smoker will just kill it off. Unfortunately not all people have the same views on the topic and this is why smoking stands to be a huge social issue to this day.

Smoking has been an act that has been around since the Gods created Earth and I think if they had known how much of a Health Hazard it has proven to be they never would of created the stuff.

By Cutting down on advertisements, putting warning signs on packages, restricting areas to smoke in, cutting down the age, rising the prices etc, are all tactics in managing this problem, but are they going to work? I think that if they started to put images of lungs on the smoke packages and maybe even cut down on the amounts of tobacco etc that is put into them that may help, but I am unsure if that is even a possibility.

I believe that people today know all they 'want' to know not all they 'need' to know about smoking and it is up to them to help themselves. I am against the fact that surgeons are being allowed to decide who to operate on though, yes they bought it on themselves, if it was caused my smoking, but it is no reason to punish them further. Doctors and Surgeons were trained and are trained to help save lives, not help decide which lives to save and until that problem is resolved the tabloids are going to continue to print the stories like 'Ban on transplants has smokers gasping" and the world is going to continue to be in taters over it.

Nicole Messner 11.38

1. Action on Smoking and Health

www.ash.org.uk/

This website was useful as it had medical and social problems cohering with this issue and gave me a better insight not only for this essay but for myself

2. Smoking - Pros & Cons

Encyclopaedia Britannica 2000

This gave me a few helpful ideas on how it is seen as a social problem and ways to overcome them.

3. Articles 1, 2 & 3 of Assignment

These were my main bases of information, these articles gave me my grounding information and I basically built it up around them.

4. Smoking Causes More Harm than Good?

Article written by Tina Mores

This article gave me a few ideas on why smoking is a relevant topic in today's society, especially passive smoking.