Today is day 16, and I’m going strong. There’s nothing that I can see in my near future that’s going to make me relapse. I have resisted many tempting situations in these past 16 days, but I haven’t caved in. I’m continuing to feel better physically and mentally. I’m starting to notice many teenagers smoking cigarettes. I think that cigarettes are becoming more and more accessible to minors. In my opinion, the local/state governments can be doing more to prevent these cancer-sticks from getting into the hands of our youth. I became addicted to nicotine around the age of sixteen. My friends and I would all go to a certain store to get our tobacco because this store didn’t card anybody. I understand that as a business, you want to make as much money as you can. But from a moral standpoint, this is just wrong. That store was a huge influence on my addiction to cigarettes. If they weren’t so readily accessible, I wouldn’t have become addicted (or at least not at that age).
Researchers agree that strong intervention measures to teen smoking need to be enacted—and successfully. For example, CEO Nancy A. Brown of the AHA (American Heart Association) says that State lawmakers have not lived up to their promises to fund and enact more vigorous tobacco prevention programs. In addition, the statement says that 34 states and the District of Columbia had actually cut funding for tobacco prevention programs. Only one state – North Dakota – was funding tobacco prevention programs at the level recommended by the CDC. “State lawmakers have more than enough resources to make a huge difference in their communities,” Brown said in the statement. “Now they must back their promises with real and immediate results.”
Brown said that proven tobacco control policies have reduced MI “hospitalizations and other chronic illnesses in states that implement these measures.” She also suggested that current regulations and tobacco taxes do not go far enough to help smokers quit. “The battle against tobacco must be fought on several fronts,” Brown said. “Although we’re making progress with smoke-free workplace laws, higher tobacco excise taxes and the enactment of federal legislation to regulate the tobacco industry, we must do more to give smokers the tools and resources they need to kick this deadly habit.”
The average twenty-a-day smoker spends $100,000 or more in his or her lifetime on cigarettes. What do we do with that money? (It wouldn’t be so bad if we just set light to it.) We actually use it systematically to congest our lungs with cancerous tars, progressively to clutter up and poison our blood vessels. Each day we are increasingly starving every muscle and organ of oxygen, so that each day we become more lethargic. We sentence ourselves to a lifetime of filth, bad breath, stained teeth, burnt clothes, filthy ashtrays, and the foul smell of stale tobacco. It is a lifetime of slavery. We spend half our lives in situations in which society forbids us to smoke (churches, hospitals, schools, trains, theaters, and the like) or, when we are trying to cut down or stop, feeling deprived. The rest of our smoking lives are spent in situations where we are allowed to smoke, but wish we didn’t have to. What sort of hobby is it that when you are doing it you wish you weren’t, and when you are not doing it you crave it?
Nicotine, a colorless, oily compound, is the drug contained in tobacco that addicts the smoker. It is the fastest addictive drug known to mankind. Every puff on a cigarette delivers, via the lungs to the brain, a small dose of nicotine that acts more rapidly than the dose of heroin the addict injects into his veins. Nicotine is a quick-acting drug. Levels in the bloodstream fall quickly to about half within thirty minutes of smoking a cigarette and to a quarter within an hour of smoking a cigarette. This explains why many smokers average about twenty per day. As soon as the smokers extinguishes the cigarette, the nicotine rapidly starts to leave the body and the smoker begins to suffer withdrawal pangs.
There is no physical pain in the withdrawal from nicotine. It is merely an empty, restless feeling, the feeling of something missing, which is why many smokers think it is something to do with their hands. If it is prolonged, the smoker becomes nervous, insecure, agitated, lacking in confidence, and irritable. It is like hunger – for a poison, NICOTINE. Within seven seconds of lighting a cigarette the smoker is supplied with fresh nicotine and the craving ends, resulting in the feeling of relaxation and confidence that the cigarette gives. The whole business of smoking is a series of conundrums. All smokers know at heart that they are fools and have been trapped by something evil. However, I think the most pathetic aspect about smoking is that the enjoyment that the smoker gets from a cigarette is the satisfaction of trying to get back to the state of peace, tranquility, and confidence that his body had before he became hooked in the first place.
You know that feeling when a neighbor’s burglar alarm has been ringing all day, or there has been some other minor, persistent aggravation. Then the noise suddenly stops – that marvelous feeling of peace and tranquility is experienced. It is not really peace but the ending of the aggravation. Before we start the nicotine chain, our bodies are complete. We then force nicotine into the body, and when we put the cigarette out and the nicotine starts to leave, we suffer withdrawal pangs - not physical pain, but an empty feeling. We are not even aware that it exists, but it is like a dripping tap inside of our bodies. Our rational minds do not understand it; they don’t need to. All we know is that we want a cigarette, and when we light one the craving goes, and for the moment we are content and confident again just as we were before we became addicted. However, the satisfaction is only temporary because, in order to relieve the craving, you have to put more nicotine into the body. As soon as you extinguish that cigarette the craving starts again, and so the chain goes on. It is a chain for life- UNLESS YOU BREAK IT.
Citations:
AHA: State lawmakers need to do more for tobacco prevention. (2010, February 25). Hem/Onc Today, p. 42. Retrieved Monday, March 22, 2010 from Academic Search Complete database.
Carr, A. (2005). The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. New York: Sterling Publishing, pp. 38-49.
Picture Citation:
Photograph. (2009). Death Cigarettes. Retrieved April 7, 2010 from http://theafterlifeepitaph.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/deathcigarettes.jpg
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