Tobacco taking over lives in America

As of today, tobacco is the biggest cause of preventable death or disease in America and in the world. About 480,000 Americans die each year from using this drug and 41,000 more die from exposure to secondhand smoke. 17.7 percent of people from ages 25 to 44 use tobacco, which is the highest percent age group to take this drug in America.

This drug is a huge cultural problem in America because tobacco can affect your entire body and immune system. Most people just remember tobacco as possibly getting lung cancer, but it can affect so much more, from your outer appearance it can affect your teeth, makes your hair stink, causes your nails to turn yellow, wrinkly skin, and more. From the inside it can cause heart disease, blood clotting, cervical cancer, and also more including the lung cancer that I previously mentioned.

But with just this information, do we really get the understanding of the affects of tobacco? if you are someone that has never experienced or been around anyone that was affected by this drug like me, you might not think it's a huge problem or a big deal. But in an article I recently read about a girl named Henrietta Pretty and her personal experience of her mom dying from lung cancer because of this drug it definitely makes you think more about it. In Henrietta's words, she announced that "My mum was an addict for as long as I can remember. She'd got hooked in her teen years and was never able to kick it. She'd try several times but the draw was just too strong." she continued to say that her mother thought that it was "her friend" or "her solace". But in the end her not so friendly addiction killed her, leaving behind 6 grandchildren and other family members, which is truly heart breaking.

The affect caused on the body using tobacco is a cultural problem by itself, but some people might not be concerned of their personal health while taking it. but could there be another cultural problem this drug causes than just the affect on the body alone? I have found a source called Reuters and a lady by the name of Madeline Kennedy discusses more of this problem. Another cultural problem tobacco causes is it's affect on healthcare. Madeline Kennedy states that "Of every $10 spent on healthcare in the U.S., almost 90 cents is due to smoking, a new analysis says. she also discussed that "Using recent health and medical spending surveys, researchers calculated that 8.7 percent of all healthcare spending, or $170 billion a year, is for illness caused by tobacco smoke, and public Medicare and Medicaid paid for most of these costs." That money could have been spent on greater problems if all those people wouldn't have been using tobacco, this is obviously another big problem tobacco creates.

Even though this drug is not good for anyone to use, a good amount of teens still use tobacco. This is another problem because those teenagers are going to be our next generation and if they can't quit this addiction it will cause serious problem for themselves in the future. But what could have caused this influence of taking this drug? was it family members? was it peers? could it be Hollywood and the making of their movies that show drug use in some scenes making some youth think that it could be "cool" to use? it could be any of those questions, but if there's any certain influence on you to use tobacco you should remember this information and how much this could effect your health, the people around you, and even your future. Because this can and will be a future cultural problem if this use of tobacco does not come to a complete stop. I will be studying and learning more information about the affect that social media or Hollywood can cause in a negative way with tobacco for my next post.