Smoke, Cough, & Die: The Case for a Federal Ban on Cigarettes

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Recommended: E cigarette just as bad as cigarettes

Smoking is something that millions of Americans do every day and companies profit millions of dollars every year through the sales of cigarettes, but at what cost? Five dollars a pack for a cancered lung and a heart attack. A deadly addiction comparable to heroin or cocaine, cigarettes are the only product that efficiently kills more than five million people year -- one million in the Americas-- and is still legal. The damage that it causes does not surface until years later after habitual use. The government should issue a federal ban on cigarettes because of the adverse health effects..

Smoking is a dangerous and addictive habit; each year about 440,000 people perish in the United States due to tobacco smoking (Maugh). From those 440,000 more than a third of them are from heart disease. Cigarettes increase the chance of heart disease and stroke and various types of cancers ranging from lung to pancreatic cancer, and is the leading cause of premature death in developing countries. In adults, smoking causes cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, for infants it causes sudden infant death syndrome and causes low birth weight (WHO). The most common diseases that tobacco cause involve the lungs and the heart.

When lighting up a cancer stick, stop for a second, and ponder about the ingredients that it contains; that little stick accommodates 4,000 different chemicals composed of different gases and particles made up of water, tar and nicotine. The tar has hundreds of chemicals and many of these chemicals are poisonous and known to cause cancer such as Formaldehyde, Benzene, and Benzpyrene.

The main chemical in cigarettes is nicotine; one of the most addictive substances to man and the chemical that causes the addiction that p...

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Praetor, Robert N. “Commentary: Schairer and Schönigers forgotten tobacco epidemiology and Nazi quest for racial purity.” International Journal of Epidemiology 30(2001): 31-34. Web. 15 Dec. 2009.

Rubin, Rita. “FDA: Sweet flavored cigarettes cannot be sold.” USA Today 22 Sept. 2009.

Salmon, Matt. “A much-needed alternative.” USA Today 4 Nov. 2009

Schooler, Caroline, Ellen Feighery, and June A. Flora. "Seventh Graders' Self-Reported Exposure to Cigarette Marketing and its Relationship to Their Smoking Behavior." American Journal of Public Health 86.9 (1996): 1216. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 26 Jan. 2010.

WHO, “10 facts about tobacco and second-hand smoke.” 2009. 01 Jan 2010. http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/tobacco/en/

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