Smoking in Adolsecents

Prevention of Smoking in Adolescents

A man named Bryan, who lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, started smoking when he was 13 years old. Throughout his high school years, he smoked about twenty cigarettes a day with no problem. At age 33, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died six weeks later. He left behind a wife and a three year old son (Landry). Each day, nearly six thousand children under the age of eighteen start smoking; of these six thousand, two thousand will become regular smokers (Egendorf 61). Adolescent smoking has become an increasing problem in the United States over the past twenty years. Many teens do not know how smoking affects their lives and the people around them. Because of the harmful effects smoking has on one’s body, mind, and peers, adolescents should be better educated on the health risks of smoking cigarettes in middle school. There are approximately six hundred ingredients in cigarettes. When burned, they create four thousand chemicals. At least fifty of these chemicals are known to cause cancer, and are poisonous (American Lung Association). Some ingredients found in cigarettes and/or in cigarette smoke are also found in house hold cleaners and other ordinary, everyday things. Examples of some of these are: acetone, which is found in nail polish remover; ammonia, a common household cleaner; arsenic, which is used in rat poison; carbon monoxide, which is released in car exhaust fumes; methanol, a main component in rocket fluid; nicotine, which is used as insecticide; and tar, which is used to pave roads (American Lung Association). Each day in the United States, approximately three thousand and eight hundred young people under the age of eighteen smoke their first cigarette (CDC). Also, a chemical compound named Urea is used to add flavor to cigarettes, this chemical compound is also a main component in urine (Listverse). Teens that choose to smoke cigarettes are basically eating rat poison and drinking urine and nail polish remover, which is very unhealthy and disgusting. A study was conducted to see how smoking affects the brain. Participants did not smoke for twelve hours before the test. Then they smoked two cigarettes that did not have nicotine in them. After, they smoked two nicotine-filled cigarettes. After the nicotine cigarettes, they immediately felt better (LiveScience). Smoking cigarettes releases pleasure-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, which is a hormone in the brain that produces feelings of happiness and well-being and norepinephrine, which enhances energy and alertness. Other endorphins released while smoking causes the smoker to feel relaxed and/or calm (Williams 9). The reason for these good feelings of relaxation and alertness is the nicotine in cigarettes. When one is addicted to nicotine, his or her body feels good when that addiction is fed. This happens because when a smoker consumes nicotine for a long enough time, their brain lowers their natural energy level. So, instead of providing a temporary high, smokers smoke to feel just as a normal, nonsmoker would (Health Canada). That is why most people who smoke have more than twenty cigarettes a day with no problem; they feel normal when they are puffing on cigarettes so in turn they smoke more. The amount of stress in a smoker’s life also affects how much they smoke, because when a smoker takes in nicotine they feel relaxed and if a smoker is under a lot of stress then that person will smoke more. Teens have school so it is a given that they will be stressed or overwhelmed with homework, classwork, projects, etc. Smoking cigarettes is a way for teens to cope with the stress of school. Smoking cigarettes has many negative effects on one’s physical appearance and immune system. A smoker usually has undesirable traits such as yellow teeth, yellow fingers, smelly hair, and smelly clothes (Williams 78). Smoking has specific effects on one’s body defenses and immune system. Smoking cigarettes causes your body to consume large quantities of natural antioxidants such as Vitamin C and Vitamin E (Williams 93). Antioxidants build your immune system to make it easier to fight viruses. When one starts losing antioxidants, their immune system has to fight harder to get anything that is not welcome in the body, out. Also, when one’s body has a weak immune system he/she’s hair falls off and teeth rots. Teeth rot when one smokes, because a smoker’s immune system is weak and tooth decay comes from bacteria feeding on sugar in food and drinks. Being a teenager myself, I know that I eat a lot of sugary products, chocolate bars, extra sugar in coffee, milkshakes, sugary cereals, you name it. A sixteen year old teenager who started smoking at thirteen would have horribly yellow and rotted teeth. When a teen smokes, they are not only affecting themselves but also their peers, siblings, and parents. The same way that secondhand smoke affects the daughter or son of a smoker; it affects the peers, siblings or parents of a teen smoker. Secondhand smoke is tobacco smoke being inhaled involuntary by a person who is not a smoker. Secondhand smoke has serious health consequences for everyone, from adults to babies. Some of the health problems associated with secondhand smoke: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, asthma, lung cancer, and heart disease (Egendorf 12). Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is the unexpected, sudden death of a child under the age of one in which an autopsy does not show an explainable cause of death. If a teen smokes around their new baby brother or sister, they will surely be at risk of dying. This happens because an infant’s lungs are not fully grown yet and if they breathe in the toxins that are in cigarettes, death is probable. Secondhand smoke can trigger an asthma attack in a child, and children with asthma who are exposed to secondhand smoke tend to have worse and more frequent asthma attacks than children with asthma who are not exposed to secondhand smoke (Egendorf 12). Secondhand smoke causes respiratory infections and decreased lung function in children non-smokers (Simon). Cancer is usually the outcome of serious respiratory infections. Imagine that, a five year old with lung cancer. This can also impair the child’s life in the future. The child would not be able to play sports that require a lot of running. Secondhand smoke also causes ear infections. Ear infections can be very painful at times and in serious cases impair one’s hearing. Children who are exposed to secondhand smoke also have fluid in their ears more often (Egendorf 13). This fluid usually has to be surgically drained. If a teen smokes around an infant brother or sister, the infant can inhale the equivalent of one hundred and two packs of cigarettes by the age of five (Egendorf 64). That means that this infant was taking in about twenty one packs of cigarettes a year. Since there are about twenty four cigarettes in a pack, that means the infant would be taking in five hundred and four cigarettes in only a year. Many teenagers start smoking to act like adults. Children who do adult things feel they are more like grownups, so smoking would be a lot more influential to teens in smoking environments (Williams 66). In a study conducted by the National Adolescent Student Health Survey, seventy nine percent of eight graders considered it very easy or fairly easy to obtain cigarettes (Egendorf 39). One reason it is so easy to obtain cigarettes is because usually at least one parent or family member smokes cigarettes. Also, when a child grows up in an influential smoking environment and starts smoking, they usually have a far worse addiction than the person they got the addiction from (Williams 72). So if a child sees that an influential smoker is in good health, they usually will think that they too will be in good health while smoking. Many times this is not the case and they usually end up obtaining cancer at a very young age. This is due to the very early start of smoking cigarettes. Another reason an adolescent might start smoking is because they have an older brother or sister that smokes. In the early teenage years, an adolescent is very influenced by an elder person to whom they look up to. This person does not always have to be a parent or even an adult. At times, it is an older brother or sister. The adolescent teen wants to be just like their older sibling because to the child, the older sibling is “cool”. If that older sibling smokes then the teen will think it is acceptable and start smoking as well. A ten year study of over six thousand adolescents found that sibling smoking was one of only four factors that predicted risk of regular smoking and also predicted whether or not respondents would still be smoking ten years later. Seventy six percent of the six thousand adolescents were still smoking ten years later (Egendorf 40). Peers may be the single most important factor in determining when and how adolescents first try cigarettes. The likelihood that a teen smoked was boosted about seven times if they had friends who did so, and twenty eight times if they had both friends and family who smoked (Williams 72-73). A study conducted by Kahn and associates found that sixty percent of adolescents aged eleven to seventeen smoked their first cigarette with a close friend and seventy two percent smoked their first cigarette with a group of friends. Smoking is frequently a behavior designed to achieve social acceptance from peers (Egendorf 41). Phrases like, “everyone is doing it” or “do not be such a baby” will usually get an easily influenced teen to do pretty much anything that is socially acceptable to one’s peers. Jamie Penn, a high school student, went around her school and asked random smokers who were friends why they smoke and she got peer pressure as an answer nine out of ten times (Williams 64). Just from that one mini survey, one can come to the conclusion that adolescent scare very much so about what their peers think of them and will do pretty much anything to keep up their good reputation. Parents always have that cliché line for peer pressure, “If your friend were to jump off a bridge, would you do it too?” Usually kids answer no but yet they still follow what seems to be socially acceptable to their peers. Why is this? Simply because they have not been taught on the dangers of smoking and how it affects them internally and externally. Many teens in the United States do not know the dangers of tobacco use on one’s mind, body and peers. Only fifty percent of eight graders know that a pack-a-day smoker runs a great risk of harm. The same outcome is true for sixty eight percent of twelfth graders (Williams 106). These teens were not properly taught on the harmful effects of cigarette smoking. In order to teach these uneducated adolescents on the dangers of cigarettes, I believe they should be taught in middle school or around the ages of eleven to thirteen. Around this age, one is just learning about themselves and beginning to create an image of themselves in which they think the world should view them. It is the perfect time to teach a life lesson, because before this age one is too young to comprehend their future. While one past this age is usually already opinionated in their future and no one can tell them they are wrong. “As a teenager, I can without a doubt say when adolescents hear that something is unacceptable in society, they crave the possibilities even more.”(Williams 87). This is a quote from Jacob Falwell, who has been a teen smoker since he was fourteen. When Jacob started smoking, it was already too late to persuade him to stop and it caused him to make a horrible decision. Teachers need to be short and sweet in their lectures about smoking because, teens have a short attention span. A good method in teaching teens about the dangers of smoking is involving them in interactive activities such as putting the parts of a lung together and comparing it to a lung of a smoker (Getsinger). Public health officials have maintained that a regulatory framework of education would be effective in determining the best public health opinion on the cessation of tobacco products and the abstinence of nicotine (Fagerström). These facts prove that education would be a good way to stop adolescent smoking. It is not too late for people like Jacob, there are many ways in which one can quit smoking. Nicotine is the addicting additive in cigarette smoke; if one can control their intake of nicotine in a safer way than smoking then they can possibly be slowly taken off of tobacco or nicotine for good. Some things used to control nicotine intake are: nicotine patches, nicotine gum or lozenges, nasal sprays, inhalers, Bupropian, and Varenicline (Sutton 441-442). A nicotine patch is worn on the skin and keeps a steady amount of nicotine to the body through skin contact. Nicotine gum or lozenges releases nicotine into the bloodstream by going through the lining of your mouth. Nicotine nasal spray is a liquid that is inhaled through your nose and in turn goes to your bloodstream. A nicotine inhaler is used by the means of the mouth and with that, the nicotine is absorbed in the mouth lining and throat. The last two methods are pills that reduce nicotine withdrawal symptoms, the urge to smoke, and the pleasurable effects of smoking. Nicotine patches are the ideal means of quitting cigarettes because they are the type of “out of sight, out of mind” remedy. All you have to do is stick one on your arm in the morning, pull down your sleeve, and go on with your day. There are many short and long term benefits to quitting smoking. Some examples of these benefits: twenty minutes after one quits smoking, their heart rate drops to normal; twelve hours after, carbon monoxide levels in the bloodstream drop to normal; one to nine months after, coughing and shortness of breath decrease and eventually go away; one year after, the added risk of coronary heart disease is reduced to half that of a smoker’s; five years after, the risk of stroke is reduced to that of a nonsmoker; ten years after one quits smoking, lung cancer death rate is cut in half and the risk of cancer decreases; fifteen years after, the risk of coronary heart disease is back to that of a nonsmoker (CDC). Another reason that quitting is beneficial is because it gives the quitter more energy. This is so because now that those natural antioxidants such as Vitamin C and E are not being consumed, one’s immune system will now be able to fight away viruses and they will not get sick as much. There are also physical benefits to quitting smoking. When one quits smoking, the ex-smoker’s teeth will become cleaner, stain marks on fingers from nicotine will fade, and the ex-smoker’s breath will smell better due to the absence of horrible-smelling cigarette smoke. More physical benefits include: skin is less wrinkled, the ex-smoker is able to smell and taste better, and the ex-smoker feels stronger and more able to be active (Sutton 440). Approximately four million and five hundred thousand United States adolescents are cigarette smokers, and if current tobacco patterns persist an estimated six million and four hundred thousand children will die prematurely from a smoking-related disease (Egendorf 64). If we act now, these numbers can be dramatically decreased. If middle school students are taught about the dangers of tobacco now, they will carry on the knowledge to future generations. There are many ways in which the youth can be taught about the dangers of tobacco. Some examples of ways in which the dangers of smoking can be taught are counter advertising using television commercials or posters, comprehensive school-based instruction, or community interventions. All of these programs have proved to decrease the amount of youth smokers in the area (CDC). About four hundred and forty three thousand Americans die from smoking-related illnesses each year (Simon). Each day, nearly six thousand children under the age of eighteen start smoking (Egendorf 63). These numbers can decrease by the means of education. The evidence that supports it is all here. Smoking is the largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States (Simon). The keyword in that fact is preventable. These disease and deaths are preventable, because many programs offer knowledge to youth that will stop them from ever trying a cigarette. They would never get cancer, if they knew. They would never expose their family to horrible toxins, if they knew. They would never die, if only they knew.

Works Cited 1. "CDC - Fact Sheet - Youth and Tobacco Use - Smoking & Tobacco Use.
" Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention. N.p., 15 Nov. 2012. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. <http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/youth_data/tobacco_use/index.htm>. 2. "Many Factors Contribute to Adolescent Smoking."
Smoking. Ed. Laura K. Egendorf. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. 37-44. Issues That Concern You. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 3 Mar. 2013. 3. Hilton, Matthew. "Smoking." Encyclopedia of Recreation and Leisure in America. Ed.
Gary S. Cross. Vol. 2. Detroit: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2004. 278-280. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 7 Mar. 2013. 4. Simon, Stacy. "CDC: Adult Smoking Rates Remain Steady."
American Cancer Society | Information and Resources for Cancer: Breast, Colon, Lung, Prostate, Skin. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Mar. 2013. <http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/news/cdc-adult-smoking-rates-remain-steady>. 5. "Antismoking Advertising Can Reduce Teenage Smoking." Smoking. Ed. Laura K. Egendorf.
Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. 61-65. Issues That Concern You. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 10 Mar. 2013. 6. "What 's in a Cigarette? - American Lung Association." Homepage - American Lung
Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. <http://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/about-smoking/facts-figures/whats-in-a-cigarette.html>. 7. Williams, Mary E.. Teen smoking. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Print. 8. Fagerström, Karl. "Quitting Medications." Tobacco in History and Culture: An Encyclopedia.
Ed. Jordan Goodman. Vol. 2. Detroit: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2005. 488-490. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. 9. Getsinger, Annie. “Teens mentor grade schoolers about the dangers of tobacco use.” Herald & Review (Decatur, IL) 21 Feb. 2013: Newspaper Source. Web. 19 Mar. 2013. 10. “Secondhand Smoke Is Dangerous.” Smoking. Ed. Laura K. Egendorf. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. 11-17. Issues That Concern You. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 21 Mar. 2013. 11. Landry, Sue. "Smoking Kills - Bryan Story - "He wanted you to know"." WhyQuit - #1 cold turkey quit smoking site: 160 how to stop videos. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://whyquit.com/whyquit/bryanleecurtis.html> 12. "Smoking and How to Quit." Adolescent Health Sourcebook. Ed. Amy L. Sutton. 3rd ed.
Detroit: Omnigraphics, 2011. 440-442. Health Reference Series. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. 13. "CDC - 2004 Surgeon General 's Report - Within 20 Minutes of Quitting - Poster - Smoking &
Tobacco Use." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2013. <http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/2004/posters/20mins/index.htm>

Cited: " Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention. N.p., 15 Nov. 2012. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. &lt;http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/youth_data/tobacco_use/index.htm&gt;.  2 Smoking. Ed. Laura K. Egendorf. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. 37-44. Issues That Concern You. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 3 Mar. 2013. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. 61-65. Issues That Concern You. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 10 Mar. 2013. 6 Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. &lt;http://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/about-smoking/facts-figures/whats-in-a-cigarette.html&gt;. 7. Williams, Mary E.. Teen smoking. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Print. Ed. Jordan Goodman. Vol. 2. Detroit: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2005. 488-490. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. 10. “Secondhand Smoke Is Dangerous.” Smoking. Ed. Laura K. Egendorf. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. 11-17. Issues That Concern You. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 21 Mar. 2013. 12. "Smoking and How to Quit." Adolescent Health Sourcebook. Ed. Amy L. Sutton. 3rd ed. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 2011