Argumentative Essay On Nicotine And Tobacco

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Nicotine is an infamous chemical substance that is often found in tobacco. Tobacco contains several hundred chemical compounds and has been known to cause many dangerous health issues, primarily to the respiratory system, such as coughing, asthma, and in many cases, lung cancer. However, it is not nicotine itself that causes these health issues, but rather, it is other chemicals, mainly tar, that lead to damage in the respiratory system. That is not to say that nicotine is harmless. On the contrary, nicotine is a stimulant and it is the major cause of why tobacco is so addicting (Benowitz, 2008). An advocate for this claim, could argue that nicotine is more dangerous than tobacco itself due to the addiction that it can cause. This point of …show more content…

Many could argue that nicotine is solely responsible for the addiction found in using tobacco and not the health damage. Still, an addiction by itself is an extremely bad habit and it is not something that one should overlooked. It is common for individuals to pick up a bad habit on accident, and once they do, it will be very difficult to let go of the habit. In the case of nicotine and tobacco, individuals are knowingly picking up an addiction that they do not know if they could stop. In other words, nicotine is like an addicted bad habit that is extremely hard to stop once it started. Furthermore, this habit can and will lead to an expensive and destructive lifestyle. Even without the addiction and tobacco, nicotine is a dangerous …show more content…

Therefore, banning nicotine is pointless since the amount of users is reducing anyways. Although this true to some extent, the amount of tobacco users is still very high. Every year, there are 440,000 deaths that are related to smoking (CDC, 2010). In addition, there is no telling that the amount of users will keep reducing, it is possible that cigarette and other form tobacco products will become popular again in the near future. But, what does all of this have to do with nicotine? Well, nicotine is one of the major chemical in tobacco and its addiction is why people who uses tobacco have such a hard time of letting go. Statistically speaking, around 80 percent of heavy smokers who attempt to quit smoking failed to do so (Hales, 2009). To make thing worse, tobacco and nicotine users are not only directly damaging their own health, but also the health of those who are around them as well. People who spend time around smokers are unknowing inhale the same harmful compound from tobacco, these case are known as secondhand smoke. Children are often the unfortunate victim of secondhand smoke and could grow with asthma, breathing issue, or even cancer due to someone else behavior. What about pregnant women who smoke? During the embryo and fetus stage of pregnancy, the child is susceptible to exposure that can influence their growth and behavior after birth.

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