Smoking Addiction and its Effects

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In 1990, 72 million bottles of a popular mineral water were voluntarily recalled because of small traces of benzene. The smoke from one pack of unfiltered cigarettes has as much benzene as 169 bottles of the contaminated water.
Main points
What’s in a cigarette?
What’s are the effects
What’s a smoking addiction

What’s in a cigarette?
In a cigarette there are many bad substances. Some of them that are listed behind me are: Carbon monoxide, Nitrogen oxides
Hydrogen cyanide, Ammonia, Nicotine, Tar, and many other toxic irritants. Tobacco smoke is a mixture of gases and small particles made up of water, tar and nicotine. The tar is a mixture of hundreds of toxic chemicals, many of which are known to cause cancer.
The high temperature from the burning end of a cigarette is like a miniature chemical factory. It puts out many more chemicals than are found in tobacco that has not been lit. Altogether more than 4,000 chemical compounds have been identified in tobacco smoke.
The chemicals that cause cancer are mainly in the tar. Tar, together with some of the irritant gases, may also be partly responsible for chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Nitrogen oxides are suspected, but the main agents responsible are not yet known. Neither nicotine nor carbon monoxide causes cancer, but they probably work together as causes of the heart diseases associated with smoking.
What is an addiction?
A smoking addiction means a person has formed an uncontrollable dependence on cigarettes to the point where stopping smoking would cause severe emotional, mental, or physical reactions. Everyone knows that smoking is harmful and addictive, but only a few people realize just how dangerous it can be and how addictive it is. Chances are that about one in three smokers who do not stop will eventually die because of their smoking. On average, they will die 10 to 15 years earlier than they would have died from other causes. Most smokers’ want to stop and do try, but only one in three people try to stop permanently before age 60. By this time there body has been deteriorating. The reason why so many people fail to stop is because they are addicted. Nicotine is the drug in tobacco that causes addiction. It is absorbed and enters the bloodstream, through the lungs when smoke is inhaled, and through the lining of the mouth. Nicotine is drug that affects the activity of the brain. It also has a relaxing effect, especially at times of stress.

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