TEEN SMOKING

Teen smoking Macro-Individual Determinants of Health:

Teen smoking Macro-Individual Determinants of Health

Introduction

The paper is designed to highlight the key reasons and consequences over the amplifying disorder of smoking in teenagers. The entire paper provides great information about the historical background and its current statistical data, which can provide the clear evidence about the rising and damaging rate of smoking disorder.

Discussion

What is Smoking?

When a person inhales and exhales fumes and chemicals from burning tobacco it is referred to as smoking. It is a dangerous activity as it is addictive and carries drugs and fumes which are dangerous to health. The most common of these drugs is nicotine. The most common method of smoking is to use manufactured cigarettes, but unshielded tobacco is also available which is burned in rolling paper. Other methods include cigars, hookahs, pipes, bongs and vaporizers for smoking.

Smoking is the most common recreational drug. It was initially adopted as a ritual practice and in the field of medicine for curing and resting patients. Nicotine is the commercially available drug where as hard narcotics such as opium, heroin and cannabis are less practiced as they are not commercially available and ill legal in most parts of the world.

The carcinogenic fumes burned while smoking are nicotine, acrolein, carbon mono oxide, prussic acid, tar and other health effecting fumes. All these fumes are highly dangerous for human respiratory system in particular the heart, lungs and the mouth (ACS, 2012).

The practice of cigarette smoking is very common in every part of the world. It is the prime reason for many health related problems such as heart attacks, lung cancer, heart stroke, emphysema and chronic obstructive preliminary disease. Smoking can threaten male potency. The smoker's are vulnerable to mouth cancer, esophagus and larynx cancer.

History

The modern day cigarette, which is a health abuse for many, was not initially found as a recreational drug; in fact it had religious, ritualistic and medicinal values attached with it. The interaction of the human race with tobacco plant is linked as old as 18000 years ago. Tobacco was first cultivated in the farms of American soil as a cash crop similar to cotton, wheat, corn or sugar. It was discovered by Indian Americans.

Modern day cigarettes are derived from the species tabacum and Rustica. They are 2 out of the 64 species of Nicotiana. The rituals of smoking are found to be as old as 5000 B.C. in the lands of Ecuador and Peru.

The initial use of tobacco was as antiseptic in medicine, as a pesticide in farming and a reagent in lice killing skin ointments. At the same time, tobacco was for smoking, and it was chewed, as well. The shamans used it as a ritual practice before marriage and during weddings.

In the 1800s using tobacco as a recreational drug was common among men and women. People chewed and occasionally smoked tobacco in pipes. It was in 1865 that Washington Duke and James Bonsack came with first factory of producing ...