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Against Public Smoking ? - Stop Smoking !Is tobacco smoking safe and harmless ?Tobacco is the single greatest cause of preventable death globally. Tobacco use leads most commonly to diseases affecting the heart, liver and lungs, with smoking being a major risk factor for heart attacks, strokes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (including emphysema and chronic bronchitis), and cancer (particularly lung cancer, cancers of the larynx and mouth, and pancreatic cancer). It also causes peripheral vascular disease and hypertension. The effects depend on the number of years that a person smokes and on how much the person smokes. Starting smoking earlier in life and smoking cigarettes higher in tar increases the risk of these diseases. Also, environmental tobacco smoke, or secondhand smoke, has been shown to cause adverse health effects in people of all ages.Cigarettes sold in underdeveloped countries tend to have higher tar content, and are less likely to be filtered, potentially increasing vulnerability to tobacco-related disease in these regions.The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that tobacco caused 5.4 million deaths in 2004 and 100 million deaths over the course of the 20th century.Similarly, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes tobacco use as "the single most important preventable risk to human health in developed countries and an important cause of premature death worldwide." Several countries have taken measures to control the consumption of tobacco with usage and sales restrictions as well as warning messages printed on packaging. Smoke contains several carcinogenic pyrolytic products that bind to DNA and cause many genetic mutations. There are 45 known or suspected chemical carcinogens in cigarette smoke. Tobacco also contains nicotine, which is a highly addictive psychoactive drug and has been shown to promote cancer growth. When tobacco is smoked, nicotine causes physical and psychological dependency. Tobacco use is a significant factor in miscarriages among pregnant smokers, and it contributes to a number of other threats to the health of the fetus such as premature births and low birth weight and increases by 1.4 to 3 times the chance for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).The result of scientific studies done in neonatal rats seems to indicate that exposure to cigarette smoke in the womb may reduce the fetal brain's ability to recognize hypoxic conditions, thus increasing the chance of accidental asphyxiation. Incidence of impotence is approximately 85 percent higher in male smokers compared to non-smokers,and is a key factor causing erectile dysfunction (ED).
Male and female smokers lose an average of 13.2 and 14.5 years of life, respectively. According to the results of a 50 year study of 34,486 male British doctors, at least half of all lifelong smokers die earlier as a result of smoking. Smokers are three times as likely to die before the age of 60 or 70 as non-smokers. In the United States, cigarette smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke accounts for roughly one in five, or at at least 443,000 premature deaths annually. To put this into context, in the US alone, tobacco kills the equivalent of three jumbo jets full of people crashing every day, with no survivors. On a worldwide basis, this equates to a single jumbo jet every hour. So is tobacco smoking safe and harmless ? It doesn't seem like it. Is nicotine safe and harmless ?Nicotine is the active ingredient that is primarily responsible for the addictive nature of tobacco and electronic cigarettes. Nicotine is a highly toxic poison. More toxic than arsenic or strychnine. So toxic it has been used as an agricultural pesticide. If you extracted the nicotine content of just a few cigarettes into a solution, and injected it into a vein, it would kill you. The high toxicity of nicotine usually comes as a surprise to many smokers. The reason smokers don't usually drop dead immediately when smoking is that it is pretty difficult to overdose on nicotine through smoking. This is because the nicotine delivery system of 'smoking' is fairly inefficent, and the nicotine that is absorbed is metabolised and processed by the body fairly quickly - nicotine has a half life of about 2 hours.Historically nicotine has been recognised as being addictive but has not been regarded as a carcinogen. However research over the last decade has identified nicotine's carcinogenic potential in animals and cell culture, and nicotine has been noted to directly cause cancer through a number of different mechanisms. Indirectly nicotine impedes apoptosis (programmed cell death), thus promoting tumour growth. Nicotine also promotes cancer tumour growth by stimulating autogenesis (the development of new blood vessels from existing blood vessels) and neovascularization (the formation of microvascular blood vessel networks with red blood cell perfusion). In one study, nicotine administered to mice with tumors caused increases in tumour size (twofold increase);
metastasis - the development of secondary malignant growths at a distance from the primary site, showed a nine-fold
increase; and tumour recurrence increased threefold. Is propylene glycol safe and harmless ?As well as nicotine, another common major component of many electronic cigarettes is Propylene Glycol, the solvent in which the nicotine is dissolved; and for which the manufacturer of the chemical states: "Exposure to mists may cause eye irritation, as well as upper respiratory tract irritation."... Are electronic cigarettes safe and harmless ?So are electronic cigarettes, that dispense nicotine in Propylene Glycol vapour fumes really 'safe' or really 'healthier' ? Or is this really just the Nicotine Industry's marketing spin ? - Is it really more likely that the Nicotine Industry really means that "our last product, tobacco cigarettes, were just so deadly dangerous that almost anything would be safer or healthier in comparison" ? So just recognise that whilst electronic cigarettes 'might' possibly be slightly 'less dangerous' or 'less
harmful' than conventional tobacco cigarettes, or maybe dangerous in a different 'unknown' way, the smart thing to
do is to quit smoking altogether. For example, for four years the Lorillard Company promoted the "health benefits" of its 'Micronite' asbestos
filters that were supposed to reduce the effects of the tobacco smoke in the 1950's. Many of those who smoked these
cigarettes were stricken with mesothelioma, the hallmark cancer resulting from asbestos exposure; simultaneous
exposure to asbestos and tobacco smoke have a synergistic effect that amplifies the health dangers of exposure to
these substances.
Well, some research has already indicated that electronic cigarettes at least stress and may damage the lungs. There have also been cases where the Nicotine Industry advertising has claimed that electronic cigarettes are harmless - and the adverts then having had to be withdrawn because the claims couldn't be substantiated. If the Nicotine Industry were able to substantiate its claims of electronic cigarettes being safe, healthy and harmless I'm sure it would have. So are electronic cigarettes really safe and harmless? It doesn't seem like it. Smoking is associated with mental illnessOne of the most concerning effects of nicotine is the effect it has on the mind, and the way it adversely affects smokers' rational decision making capability. It leads, for example, to some smokers making a decision to continue smoking even though to do so will almost certainly result in the amputation of their second leg, after already having had one leg amputated as a result of Peripheral Arterial Disease caused by their smoking.
Some studies also suggest a strong correlation between smoking and schizophrenia, with estimates that nearly 75% of schizophrenic patients smoke. By smoking in public a smoker may inadvertently 'advertise' and suggest to others not only that
the smoker thinks that it is ok to smoke, but also that the smoker has a mental illness - probably just one more
good reason for smokers to quit smoking. "Smoking is
vanity. Not smoking is sanity." Quitting smoking makes senseQuitting smoking altogether is far far better than changing from one nicotine delivery system (tobacco cigerettes) to another nicotine delivery system (electronic cigerettes); which may encourage tumour growth and harm unborn children and serve only to maintain your nicotine dependency and that feeling of being a slave to the nicotine habit. Quit smoking now. You are not addicted - it is a habit. And it is a long term habit that over an extended period of time may well be VERY harmful to your health. It's a habit that hundreds of thousands of people have already stopped doing - so you know that you can stop too ! You can find out here how you can Quit Smoking. SourcesTobacco smoking - not safe and not harmless: http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20060720/nicotine-speeds-lung-cancer http://whyquit.com/pr/110309.html http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5182917_nicotine-affect-lungs.html http://ffn.yuku.com/topic/24790/Re-Nicotine-enhances-cancer-spreading http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/11/1045 http://whyquit.com/pr/041812.html http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024320512001890 http://www.wset.com/story/23087048/vt-researchers-question-safety-of-nicotine-patches http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0067252
http://www.dow.com/productsafety/finder/prog.htm http://www.slbsmoking.com/news_view.php?id=253 Nicotine Industry health claims/health reassurances: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Health_claims/health_reassurance The Lorillard Company's 'health cigarette', with its Micronite asbestos filter: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/You_can_see_the_proof_of_Kent%27s_Health_Protection Sean Marsee, RIP: http://www.ok.gov/okswat/documents/Sean%20Marsee%20Story.pdf http://ihm.nlm.nih.gov/luna/servlet/detail/NLMNLM~1~1~101437871~151987:18-year-old-Sean-Marsee-was-too-sma http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/253773.php http://www.wrha.mb.ca/healthinfo/news/2012/120118-weedless-wednesday.php | |||
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"I don't accept that smokers are addicted to tobacco. I think they have a habit... I believe the majority of smokers could stop tomorrow - no, today - if they really wanted to." Dr. Sandy Macara, "The nicotine inhalation habit induces a psychological dependency habit similar to that of a 43 year old teenager still living at home with mum and dad... Smokers / vapers are addicted to nicotine inhalation about as much as someone might be addicted to living at home with mum and dad - where life is made too easy for them to even think of moving out." TSS Supporters, 2013
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