Nowadays, smoking has become a trend, especially among young people. When you’re a teenager, the temptation is huge. You want to impress your friends, do like them, in countenance, going against the recommendations of your parents, the need to feel independent, old ... In short, the ones who have never tried are very rare. However, not all of them become regular smokers. It became a part of growing up. But how it became such a normality? And still, no solution has been found to fight efficiently smoking. The more this practice is positive, the more acceptable it become, the more people start smoking and encourage other to consume. Smoking is spread by "social contagion."
According to the Center Of Disease Control and Prevention, nearly half of people aged between 18 and 34 smoke. 37% of adolescent smokers aged between 11 and 15 years feel like they cannot do without cigarettes. And 54% of young people aged 20 to 24 smoke, while the proportion of smokers aged 25 to 75 years is 29%. That shows us that college students are very affected by this phenomenon. Young people often underestimate the risks of smoking and the health care risk. The youth smoking behavior is mainly determined by psychosocial reasons. The more young people start smoking, the more likely they are to become regular consumers and less likely they are to quit. If current trends continue, 250 million children and teenagers alive today who continue to smoke as adults will die from tobacco-related diseases. The tobacco industry uses a range of strategies to target young people, including in countries with low and middle
income countries, where 80 % of young people living in the world. More young people are exposed to marketing, they are more likely to use tobacco. Wh...
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...nd promotions. (LaPointe)
Thanks to the researches and the survey I've done, this phenomenon became clearer and allowed me to answer this problematic. Young people continue smoking despite the rising prices and health issues, mainly due to the influence of their environment. Families, groups of friends, advertising, media, celebrities, nicotine are factors that promote tobacco which causes over time dependence. Young smokers have little concern for their health and do not really realize the risks they are facing. Nevertheless some of the people of this generation, eventually become aware of the gravity of smoking or can no longer afford their packages of cigarettes, due to the rising prices and have no choice but to quit. However, the majority of smokers can't quit, and try to find solutions to keep on this deadly consumption either for their health or their wallet.
There has been an expediential growth in the number of teenager’s beginning to smokes do to facts such as curiousness, peer
Tobacco companies have relied on the media to lure children. They quickly realized that ‘the company that dominates is that which most effectively targets young”(Imperial Tobacco document.) To counteract the idea of disease and other negative aspects of tobacco, the industry used imagery in the media such as natural settings and healthy actors doing active things. This helps them to insinuate that smoking leads to success, romance, sophistication and other advancements in their lifestyle, which was easily imprinted in the minds of children. A document found among Imperial tobacco files described their priority: “…having our imagery reach those non-reading young people who frequent malls should be our chief goal.”(1.170) Unaware of how important the under 18 market was to the industry, the government could only attempt to lengthen the distance between schools and billboards because they’re ineffective attempts were ignored by the large corporations. With many billboards concentrated in small areas it put the idea in children’s minds that smoking was socially acceptable and that t...
To conclude, one can look economically at the cost of cigarettes, the accessibility of cigarettes, and the amount of money put into advertisements for tobacco. Also psychologically at the effects and real meaning of ads and at females ideas and misconceptions about smoking. And, finally sociologically, peer and family influence play a huge role in the increase of teen smokers.
While todays major tobacco producers deny that they market to the youth. However, we still see them subliminally targeting children through magazine advertisements, store posters, and Internet ads. In addition, they continue to use product placement strategies in mov...
Smoking is a lifestyle, a habit, and a trend. Smoking has become a social activity among teens, connecting them through the craving of a smoke. Smoking is seen as seductive and cool in the media and movies which influences teenagers to smoke even more. The World Health Organization has stated that “Tobacco kills around 6 million people each year. More than 5 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while more than 600,000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.” As of April 2016, only 7% of teenagers in the U.S. smoke, but it is said that tobacco use will kill 8 million people annually by 2030. 99% of adult smokers start in their years as teenagers. Smoking is an epidemic that has taken control of people’s lives since 1881 and the media since the early 1900s. Smoking currently kills about 440,000 people a year in the U.S. I feel that it is an issue because it is the #1 most preventable way to die, but people still continue to smoke because of how it looks and how they are perceived as a person if they do. The fact that people become addicted to a trend that will attribute to their death for the sake of being thought of as cooler, is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Every year cigarette smoking is responsible for 500,000 premature deaths (Nugel), you do not want to be just another statistic, do you? America’s first cash crop was tobacco. That means that tobacco has been around for a really long time. It was not until 1865, though, that cigarettes were sold commercially. They were sold to soldiers at the end of the Civil War (Dowshen). From then, cigarettes spread like wildfire, and it was not until 1964 that anyone made a stand about the negative effects of tobacco and cigarettes. People start smoking for all different reasons, some to fit in and some to “escape”. Regardless, it is a horrible habit. 3900 children will try their first cigarette today. Amongst adults who currently smoke, 68% of them began at age 18 or younger, and 85% at 21 or younger (American Lung Association). And of all those people, 70% say if they were given another chance they would never have picked up that first cigarette (Tobacco Free Maine). Smoking is responsible for 1 and 5 deaths in the united states, and is the number one preventable cause of death (NLH). Smoking burns and there is no doubt about that, but before one picks up that cigarette, understand the negative effects on not only oneself, but others affected by ones poor choices, like second-hand smoke. Because of smoking cigarettes, many types of cancer, decrease of life quality, and negative health effects have become all too common in the world today.
Although there are many cigarette advertisements that have been banned, tobacco companies continue to find ways to lure teenagers into buying cigarettes. By starting campaigns to encourage young teenagers to not smoke and giving them advice to make better decisions, it will increase their mental stability to believe that smoking cigarettes is a bad habit. Now, it is up to our young teenagers to make the right choice and not allow tobacco companies to manipulate them.
According to Slater (2006), many risk-taking teenagers may believe in the use of smoking or alcohol is part of defining who they are. The adolescences who have a reputation of being “cool” or rebellious teenagers believe that they need to smoke to maintain their reputation. Smoking is not considered a health hazard in all cultures. For instance, a young child whose parents are involved in health and wellness will be taught how undesirable smoking is. On the other hand, the family, where the parents smoke, a young child may not be taught about the dangers smoking. Smoking can be a part of certain cultures and at the same time be an example of what not to do in another culture.
From the above few paragraphs, we are able to learn how young smokers can be affected by smoking cigarette especially young smokers that are legally allowed to smoke. Currently the age limit of smoking cigarette is starting to change from 18 to 21; according to the New York Times Needham, Mass.., Boston and New York, raised the smoking age to 21 (Hartocollis). States start to increase the age limit of smoking cigarette to 21 because they have realized they were using the wrong age limit for smoking cigarette. The united states spend a lot of money on health care concerning cigarette smoking, but if the age limit is raised to 21, The country might save millions of dollars.
In recent years, smoking has started to take over the lives of many teenagers. The number of teenagers smoking has increased dramatically in the last several years. This is a major problem because smoking can lead to sickness and major diseases that can lead to death. Teens tend to participate in this while out of the presence of an adult figure. Although teens should not be smoking in the first place, an adult figure should be around to help insure that their children are doing the right things, even when they are behind sealed doors with their peers. Teenagers as they mature become a model for younger children and when they set the example of smoking can ruin their respectable image to the children that look up to them.
Guess what? Even children who live in a smoking environment are influenced to become a smoker as they grow up; smoking has a huge impact on our younger generation as they are negatively influenced by this habit and we as adults are responsible for it. Many people don’t know this is a serious issue but they regard it as normality.
Rigotti and associated found one third of college students are current tobacco users (Obermayer, Riley, Ofer, & Jersino, 2004). College students however are unlikely to seek professional help to quit smoking. 46 college student participants, aged 18 to 25 year old in the Washington D.C. area participated in the study. Subjects reported smoking an average of 28 cigarettes per week and had a desire to quit smoking within the next 30 days. Measurements were taken on the Seven Day Reconstructions, Nicotine Dependence Syndrome Scale, and a program questionnaire at pretest and six weeks later at
Teen Smoking Teen smoking. Those two words mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. To some it means nothing. They are just two meaningless words found under T and S in the dictionary. To others it is as if these words symbolize some sort of treason or crime against society. Yet to others it is just another stereotype to be placed under. And to some it is a salvation. An escape. Unfortunately I am writing this paper so you will get my positions on teen smoking rather than other peoples. Teen smoking gathers a lot of emotions when I think about it. It makes me very angry sometimes. My first draft of this was good but I saw myself getting angry and lashing out on everyone, so I revised it. But enough of that, I find teen smoking to be a very controversial subject. To be completely honest with you I am smoking right now as I am writing this. Obviously I am a smoker. I am 17 years old and I am a smoker. In the late 1990’s, the statistics showed that approximately 25% of teens smoke. That’s one out of every four teenagers. High school is a tough time for teens. These years are critical to a teens future. This explains why a vast majority of smokers start at 16 years or younger with the most common age being 14 years old(freshman). It has also been proven also that teens who score lower in school smoke more than higher scoring students do. It seems that everyone smokes in our school. Our school is overrun with smokers. It is right now at least 50% smokers and 65% if you count the people who will smoke before their high school career is up. We practically encourage it. I mean Fireman’s Field practically condones teen smoking. Teen smoking is defiantly a problem in our school, as well as schools all over the United States. I feel that teen smoking is a huge problem. I feel that too many teenagers smoke cigarettes. It is something that needs to get dealt with. But before I get into that I should probably start with the causes of teen smoking. There are several factors that start teens on smoking cigarettes. There has to be considering that over 1 million new teenagers will start smoking annually. The most common is peer pressure.
Today, there has been an increase in the amount of teenagers who smoke half a pack a day of cigarettes. The number of seniors in high school who have tried cigarettes has decreased over the years, but the number of those who smoke occasionally or half a pack or more a day, has increased. There are many factors as to why teenagers smoke including advertising and teen behavior. There are also a few ways we can stop teenagers from wanting to smoke. Therefore, we need to make teens aware that smoking is not good for you and it is not cool and we need to figure out why teens think it is cool. We need to find out why teens smoke and how we can make the
Consequently, tobacco which contains many harmful chemicals damages human beings’ health day by day. Although people are aware of the bad effects of smoking, they still smoke for one reason or another. When the current situation is considered, it is clear that smoking which has been spreading all over the world is not only the problem of a country or a territory but the problem of mankind because smoking brings many disadvantages for humans like diseases. I personally believe that it is important to help children remain lifelong non-smokers because they are our hope for a non-smoking future.