Smoking - Final draft

Abdulmohsen Alkahtani

 

Smoking

            In this century, many people smoke different kinds of tobacco such as cigarettes and hookah. And also, there are many companies which produce different kinds of tobacco, and these kinds of companies make a lot of money which is approximately equal to the income of some countries. Yet, the problem is there are many young people who smoke a lot which could cause a big problem for their health, society, or economy. There are a lot of questions, but the most important questions are: What are the major causes and effects of smoking, and what are the possible ways of quitting smoking. While there are some people who think that smokers cannot quit smoking, there are several ways to quit smoking.

Reasons People Smoke:

            Smoking tobacco has an old history. According to Pampel (2004) tobacco was discovered before 5000 years ago, and it was used for medical purpose and religious properties; after that young people have used tobacco feel relaxed and fun; then it spread widely in the world. Also, smoking has been debated during the past years by society. During the seventeenth century, religious leaders and statesmen in many countries condemned the use of tobacco. Smokers were excommunicated by the church, and some of them were condemned to death and executed. This history is providing that those leaders had known the danger of smoking on people and they tried to protect people from dangers of smoking.

The world Health Organization and all medical organizations 2010 emphasized that smoking is the biggest risk facing humanity today. “Estimates of the number of yearly deaths from smoking – related causes exceed 400,000 (about one-sixth of all deaths), and smokers can expect to die 13-14 years earlier than nonsmokers. The situation has improved since the famous 1964 report of the surgeon general on the harm of cigarettes, but it remains serious. Despite falling cigarette use in past decades, 23 percent of the U.S. population in the year 2000 smoked, and another 22 percent used to smoke –making nearly half the population vulnerable to the risks of early death. Worse, young people today continue to adopt the habit at about the same rate as 10 years ago” (Pampel, 2010, 3).  These numbers show us the real danger of smoking and how smoking kills more than what wars kill, but the most important question here is how we can help smokers to quit smoking.

            Smoking behavior is learning behavior which means it is not a genetic thing, but it comes by learning other habits. For example, “George attends a party and meets this lovely young thing who is wearing a certain distinctive perfume. They have a very pleasant time at the party and warm feelings are aroused. A few weeks later, George walks into the library at school and smells that perfume. He finds himself experiencing some very pleasant feeling and looking around to see if the young woman is there. Up to the time he went to the party, the perfume would have been just a pleasant aroma, or, conceivably, he wouldn’t have even liked it. Now he feels good when he smells it” (Kish, 1988, 8). If we look carefully to this example we will find that learning how to smoke starts when you spend a lot of time with other smokers, who just smoke while you have a pleasant time with them. So, here is the beginning of learning how to smoke tobacco. According to Kish (1988), there are three possible ways to learn smoking (8-15):

       I.            Associative learning: which is you associate events that occur close together in time and respond to them in a similar way;

    II.            Instrumental learning: this is that kind of behavior which functions to get a payoff for the person; and

 III.            Modeling learning: this way define learning behavior by observe others.

In the first way, a lot of ads on TV try to associate a positive feeling while watching one of their products. “A few years back, there was an ad on TV showing a beautiful, slim, tanned young woman in a snow-white bikini who undulated toward the camera and started drinking a cold can of Sprite. The idea was to have you associate the positive feeling which you had toward the girl with Sprite so that when your eyes fell upon the cans of Sprite at the supermarket, you would experience some of these warm feeling” (Kish, 1988, 8). The second way focuses on how learned behavior pays off. For example, when you have headache you learn take an aspirin which is the behavior; so your headache will be relieved, which is the payoff. In this example, people learn how to smoke as behavior of getting upset, so coming down after they smoke becomes as pay off of this behavior. The third way is how young people learn to smoke from older people. For example, boys observe their parents who are smokers, so these boys will learn how to smoke automatically from their parents.

Effects of smoking:

Smoking causes a lot of effects on people health such as their body system, respiratory system, and also passive smoker who are nonsmoker people. Many studies point out that there are a lot of dangerous problems which can smoke cause especially on respiratory system. “The acute effects of cigarette smoke upon the respiratory tract include: (1) a depression of function in the ciliae lining the airway; (2) a stimulation of mucus production by the goblet cells of the bronchial lining; (3) a varying amount of bronchospasm. Chronic exposure may cause chronic bronchitis, emphysema and various forms of lung cancer” (Shephard, 1982, 73). And also, there are many symptoms of health effects on the respiratory system, especially upon children such as “wheezing, coughing, and sputum production, are increased in children of smoking parents” (National Research Council, 1986, 9). Beside that smoking can cause lung cancer for nonsmoking people and this is what some studies found out, “among studies of various populations in Europe, Asia, and North America, the risk of lung cancer is roughly 30% higher for nonsmoking spouses of smoker than it is for nonsmoking spouses of nonsmokers” (National Research Council, 1986, 10).

 Smokers should notice that smoking not only causes problems in respiratory system, but also causes some damage in their body system. There are some serious effects on smoker’s body. One of these effects is “every exposure to tobacco, from occasional smoking or secondhand smoke, can damage DNA in ways that lead to cancer” (Szabo, 2011, 15B). In this effect we can see clearly the biggest problem which smoking can do for smokers. In addition to that, smoking can cause the most dangerous health effect which is heart attack. And also, smoking can make negative effects on women especially pregnant women. According to Stratton (2001), there is health effect of smoking on pregnant women especially in rate of birth which means the rate of birth will go down if pregnant women have exposure to any kind of tobacco during the pregnancy period.

Now there is an important question someone might ask: are there any health effects for secondhand smoke? The answer is yes; there are many health effects can smoke cause upon passive smoking people such as heart attack and lung cancer. “Under conditions of poor ventilation, non-smokers could inhale the equivalent of the smoking of four cigarettes over the course of a single hour; on this basis, benzpyrene from regular and heavy passive exposure would cause two cases of lung cancer per year in a group of 100,000 non-smokers” (Shephard, 1982, 95). Moreover, smoking can make children at risk from passive exposure to cigarette smoke. According to Shephard (1982), children are attacked from both air pollutants and respiratory pathogens due to a high respiratory minute volume of body mass; and infants probably have no chance to move away from a chain-smoking mother.

Ways to quit:

When we look at all of these negative effects, we should think about how we can help those people, who just started smoking, to quit their bad habit and become healthy as normal people. There are several ways to quit smoking and different methods. Yet, smokers should know that they are able to quit smoking without any pain or difficulties. “For example, in cases where long-term smokers successfully quit permanently, some common factors emerge: They did not suffer more than very moderate physical withdrawal symptoms, they lost the psychological need to smoke almost immediately, They did not experience any of the difficulties that are traditionally linked by smokers to giving up such as lack of concentration and they described it as ‘easy’, ‘painless’, ‘no big deal’ or a ‘non-event” (Shah, et. al, 2004, 27).

Here are five important steps could help smokers to quit smoking, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in How You Can Help Patients to  Stop Smoking (1991):

a)      First, obtain smoker’s history: so we must understand the smoking habit of smokers before we start drawing the strategy which is effective for them (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991, 13)

b)      Second, prepare smokers to be ready to quit: if smoker shows us readiness to quit, we have to set a quit date. So we should let smokers decide when to quit and how to do it. And also, there are three techniques we should teach smokers to help them quitting smoking such as stop, think, and act. Stop: teach them how to say stop to themselves, Think of why they try to quit and think that they can wait out the urge, Act like get up and move around, keep their hands busy, talk to a friend, breathe deeply, and chew sugarless gum (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991, 13-14)

c)      Third, discuss relapse prevention: in this step we should help smokers to quit smoking in three step strategy: .( U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991, 15-16)

                   I.            Educate smokers: Sort out common causes of relapse such as sad feeling, upset, and worried. Warn the first time quitter about the dangers of testing his/her abstinence.  Explain that smoking one cigarette does not end the effort to quit.

                II.            Support quitter: By encourage him/her to keep going to reach his/her aim, which is quitting smoking.

             III.            Prepare smokers for coping with a relapse.

d)     Fourth, address weight-related issues: This step include four ways to help smokers quitting: ( U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991, 16-17)

1.      Help smokers put weight gain into proper perspective: by giving some information about the facts of losing weight when they smoke, and what is the expected change in their weight if they quit.

2.      Help smokers control their weight as much as possible: by suggest some steps to control their weight while they follow the program of quit smoking.

3.      Help smokers alleviate constipation: by recommending special diet.

4.      Adapt your suggestion to smokers: by encourage the behavior changes that are possible and recognize your quitter limits.

e)      Finally, follow up and provide maintenance support for the quitters (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991, 17-18).

There are also some methods, which could help smokers to make the decision, to quit smoking. One of them is called Ben Franklin method of decision making. “In the Ben Franklin method, you take a sheet of paper and rule it down the middle. One column is headed pros (+) and other cons (-). Then you list all the pros and cons you can think of. To do a good job, you should research the subject to some extent. Discuss it with your friends. Find out why they smoke and what they get out of it. Look at your own feelings. Can you think of what you get out of smoking? List them” (Kish, 1988, 21).

In conclusion, Smoking is not a good thing for our community, especially when we know all of the serious effects of smoking. As well we already know the causes of smoking which can help us to find a way to protect the next generation from fall into this terrible disease. Moreover, quitting smoking is not too tough for smokers, who have willpower, to quit smoking by following the proper program for them to quit smoking. Smokers will find themselves having a healthy life just as normal people if they quit smoking soon. Of course, causes of smoking might be different from person to another, but we can work to support smokers to quit by following ways of quit smoking. Last but not least, we should know that prevention is better than treatment.

References

 

             Alder, H., Morris, K., & Shah, D. (2002). Don’t stop smoking until you’ve read this book. Oxford how to books, Ltd.

            Kish, G. (1988). Quit smoking painlessly. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc.

            National Research Council. (1986). Environmental tobacco smoke: Measuring exposures and assessing health effects. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

            Pampel, F. (2004). Tobacco industry and smoking. New York, NY: Facts on File, Inc.

            Shephard, R. (1982). The risks of passive smoking. Manuka, Australia: Croom Helm Ltd.

Stratton, K, (2001 ) Clearing the Smoke: Assessing the Science Base for Tobacco Harm Reduction. Washington, D.C; National Academies Press, 2001.

Szabo, L (2010) Report: Just one cigarette is bad. The Miami times, 88 (17), 15

            U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1991). How you can help patients stop smoking. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.