Cigars

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Introduction

Smoking is the practice of inhaling tobacco from a pipe, cigar or cigarette. The custom of smoking tobacco is taught to have started in the Americas. In the late 1400’s, English and Spanish explorers returning from the New World brought back to Europe the custom of pipe smoking, which they had learned from the Indians. Cigarette smoking may have started among the Aztecs of Mexico, who smoked shredded tobacco rolled inside cornhusks.

Until the 1990’s tobacco was used mainly in cigars, chewing tobacco, and snuff. Later cigarette smoking become popular and increased sharply after World War I (1918) and again after World War II (1945).

An estimated 1.2 billion people worldwide smoke cigarettes, cigars, pipes or bidis- rolled in a leaf - and expose billions more non-smokers to the carcinogenic chemicals in the form of particles and gases. Carbon monoxide, ammonia, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide are among the potentially toxic ones. It is critical that people recognize the dangers of smoking before they consider taking up the habit. Smoking causes smoke’s cough, a lower capacity for exercise, addiction to nicotine, and in the long run, severe disability and death.

Globally, tobacco is a major cause of death. According to recent estimates, in developed countries alone, tobacco was responsible for 1.7 million deaths in 1985, and will cause a projected 2.1 million deaths in 1995. For the decade 1990-1999, 21 million deaths will be caused in developed countries; more than half of these deaths will be among those aged between 35 and 69, making tobacco the largest single cause of premature death in these countries. There is wider uncertainly about the numbers of death caused by smoking in less developed countries, but it will probably be in the vicinity of around 1 million deaths per year n 1995, making a global total of tobacco deaths around 3 million for that year.

A...