Romeo and Juliet

Smoking

Smoking refers to the inhalation and exhalation of fumes from burning tobacco in cigars, cigarettes and pipes. Historically, smoking as a practice, was followed by natives of the Western Hemisphere, in religious rituals and for medicinal purposes. It has a history starting from the late 1500s. We would try to answer the question as to what is smoking later in the article.

Explorers of the New World saw it fit to introduce tobacco into Europe, in-spite of the opposition from the then rulers. But the novelty and thrill factor won over many a new user. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, cigarettes were higher in demand than the cigars and pipes, which had been popular amongst smokers until then.

Health Effects of Smoking:

Tobacco smoke contains nicotine – a poisonous alkaloid – and other harmful substances like carbon monoxide, acrolein, ammonia, prussic acid and a number of aldehydes and tars. Health reports giving definitive proof that cigarette smoking is a serious health hazard have been submitted from time to time by the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Health, appointed by the U.S. Public Health Service. Findings include that a smoker has a significantly greater chance of contracting lung cancer than a nonsmoker, depending on factors such as number of cigarettes smoked daily, number of years the subject smoked and the time in the person’s life when he or she began smoking.

Additionally, the report also gave proof of smoking being a primary cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases.

Smoking has proved to pose a threat to male potency. Pipe and cigar smokers are a comparatively fortunate lot as compared to cigarette smokers, if they do not inhale. They are not as prone to lung cancer as cigarette smokers. On the downside, the former set is just as likely to develop cancers of the mouth, larynx and esophagus. Groups of people indulging in snuff or chewing...