To Smoke Or Not To Smoke?

6 Pages 1443 Words

To smoke or not to smoke? These days, most people know the answer—and yet 46 million Americans lit up last year, at least 1 million for the first time (Levingston 96). Despite the mounting evidence, the tobacco industry stubbornly defends its products, contending that no one has proved a cause-and-effect link between smoking and disease. On the contrary medical evidence now proves a multitude of diseases traced to smoking.
Heart Disease: More Americans die of coronary artery disease than any other illness, and smokers face twice the risk of dying from cardiac ailments. Smoking causes death by stroke and aneurysm and also leads to peripheral vascular disease.
Cancer: Studies today definitively show that smoking causes lung cancer—America’s leading cancer killer—in both men and women. The risk of dying from the disease is twenty-two times higher for male smokers and twelve times higher for female smokers (Hollbrook 26).
Other Diseases: Smoking is the major cause of chromic obstructive lung diseases (including emphysema). It increases the risk of pneumonia and of gastric and duodenal ulcers. Smoking has been linked with prenatal deaths (due to respiratory difficulties and premature births) and with marked loss of hipbone density in both men and women (Hollbrook 26).
Aging: “Cigarette smoking increases wrinkling and speeds up skin aging, especially of combined with excessive sun exposure,” says Dr. John H. Holbrook, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine. And smoking can make wrinkles, especially crows-feet, much more prominent (26).
Tooth Loss: Smokers are one and a half times more likely to suffer tooth loss that nonsmokers: tooth decay and gum disease are also more prevalent among smokers (Hollbrook 26).
Infertility: For reason that are still unclear, smoking seems to hamper the union of ovum and sperm. Early findings indicate that smoking diminishes sperm motility ...