Smoking Is The Single Highest Cause Preventable Death

Steven Reinberg is a senior staff reporter for HealthDay. He also has won awards for his health journals and has written for both consumer and professional audiences. Reiberg wrote this piece for HealthDay and then it was published on WebMD. WebMD is online source where anyone can go to get health information. All the information comes from over 100 doctors and physicians that WebMD works with so that they can provide accurate information. This article provides information on the the benefits of electronic cigarettes outweigh the harm they might cause. Using the liquid for electronic cigarettes cuts out all the extra chemicals that are found in traditional cigarettes.

Everyone always wants to be with the latest trend, and as many celebrities and magazine ads have pictures of vaping, electronic cigarettes have become a "trend”. People are largely unaware of the emergency risks of vaping. According to a study by Mitch Zeller he states, “I can say definitely, that nicotine is harmful to a developing teenage brain. And no teenager, no young person. should be using any tobacco or nicotine-containing products”. Unlike true cigarettes, electronic cigarettes do not have

In the United States, smoking cigarettes is the number one preventable cause of morbidity and death (Bergen, 1999), and accounts for $300 Billion in health care costs and economic productivity loss (Jamal, 2015). While the national smoking rate is 16.8% (CDC, 2016), specific demographics are more susceptible to developing smoking habits: people who live below the poverty line (10.9% higher), disabled or with a limitation (6.2% higher), and males (4.7% higher) (Agaku, 2014).

     Nicotine is addictive! Most smokers use tobacco regularly because they are addicted to the nicotine. You can be addicted to the nicotine in a physical and physological addiction. Addiction is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, even if they are in the risk of health problems. It is well documented that most smokers identify tobacco as harmful and express a desire to reduce or stop using it, and nearly 35 million of them make a serious attempt to quit. Unfortunately, 7% of those who try to quit in their own achieve more than 1 year of abstinence; most relapse within a few days of trying to quit. Some of the other factors besides nicotine addictive properties include its high level of availability, the small number of legal consequences of using the tobacco, and the advertising methods used by companies. What most people do not realize is that the

It is the most common addiction throughout the world with 1.1 trillion people smoking currently, consisting about a third of the population over 15 years old. While nicotine is the addictive substance in the tobacco that causes addiction, tobacco will increase health risks of heart attack and vascular diseases. Nicotine dependency is a complex brain disease, and we need to start thinking of it as such. New ways of ingesting this substance have been created, that try to lure and appeal to demographic, particularly younger, to consume nicotine. Regardless of how many years someone has smoked, stopping at any point will valuable and improve your quality of life. Changing the public’s view on addiction is a subject of importance, so many of others can view this as a brain disease more than a personal decision. To fight this addiction, you have to rewire your behaviors in your brain and have a drive to overcome this horrific addiction. The brain can luckily keep changing and be trained to stop cravings with a multitude of different strategies. Anyone can be affected by addiction, we need start treating addicts with evidence-based practices rather than jailing them. Through more education and laws enforced, we can only hope that the number of tobacco users can decrease more and everyone can learn to live a healthier, full life without addiction and the painful diseases that derive from

Quitting rates of participants who are unwilling to stop smoking at all using electronic cigarettes shows how much of an effective cessation method they are. For nicotine replacement therapy to work, smokers would have to volunteer to quit and seek help, while with electronic cigarettes cessation just happens.

The addiction to tobacco, nicotine, and smoking is something the humans have embraced and battled since the early 1800’s. With more and more people falling into the habit and becoming addicted, many detrimental health effects on the body caused people to question what was going on and what was causing these negative reactions in the body. Soon enough, the healthy and “cool” cigarettes that everyone was smoking became the face of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, birth defects, and many other deadly bodily reactions. In the early 2000’s electronic cigarettes (ECs) were developed by a Chinese pharmacist that hoped to allow smokers to maintain their nicotine addiction, but limit or end the harmful and detrimental effects of tobacco on the body, due to his father’s death of tobacco-attributable lung cancer.1 A typical EC consists of a rechargeable lithium battery, a heating tool called an atomizer, which vaporizes a humectant (typically propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and/or polyethylene glycol 400). The humectant contains liquid nicotine. When the smoker inhales, the heating tool is activated by an airflow sensor, and the nicotine is vaporized.1 2

Of the roughly 42 million adults in the US that use tobacco, nearly 69% of smokers want to quit and more than 42% of those wishing to quit will make the attempt through various methods(1). These methods range from the "cold turkey" method, nicotine replacement therapy, behavioural therapy and even medicine. Each method has it's unique strengths and weaknesses as well as varying success rates. There are many reasons to quit and many ways in which to do so, either with methods that involve slowly weaning off of nicotine, like gums and patches from replacement therapy, to nicotine-free methods which require support from various sources.

In the United States, the usage of cigarettes is slowly declining, making way for alternative forms of tobacco and nicotine sources to become popular. In the past decade, one of these cigarette alternatives has become very popular, even widely among teens, and it’s referred to as “vaping”. Vaping is the use of electronic cigarettes that replace burning paper and tobacco with flavored steam, which usually has nicotine in it (Kriegel). Since vaping hasn’t been around very long and hasn’t become popular until recently, not much is known about the effects or how harmful it could be long term. One source says, “There's also a widespread belief that e-cigarettes are safe, or at least safer than conventional tobacco products. But several studies have suggested this may not be the case,” (Fox). Although there is a very strong debate on whether e-cigarettes are a safe alternative for cigarettes, there are too many risk factors involved due to conflicting information and studies, for vaping to be deemed safe.

E-cigarettes have exploded onto the scene in the past three years. Whole stores dedicated to these devices have opened their doors to the public and business is thriving. E-cigarettes are battery-charged devices that have an atomizer, or heating element, in them to vaporize liquid nicotine. The user is able to inhale this vapor and get the nicotine without the other 4,000 chemicals present in tobacco cigarette smoke (Schroeder). Nicotine is a chemical that is produced by the tobacco plant. People have discovered that by smoking the leaves of a tobacco plant the nicotine in the leaves is delivered into the bloodstream. Nicotine by itself is not an awful drug as far as drugs go, although it is highly addictive, it is the tar in cigarettes that does so much damage. Tobacco use remains the number one preventable cause of death in the U.S. with 480,000 Americans dying prematurely from tobacco related disease. Kicking this habit remains difficult for most (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). Mark Twain once wrote “It’s easy to quit smoking, I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

“Many anti-smoking advocates have argued that electronic cigarettes don’t help smokers quit but merely prolong their addiction to nicotine. In other words, the hundreds of thousands of electronic cigarette users in the United States are smokers who, if only they stopped using e-cigarettes, would successfully quit smoking” (Siegel,

Every year, an estimated 443, 000 Americans die of smoking related illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC also states “the leading cause of preventable death” is smoking. ("Smoking & Tobacco Use-Fast Facts”). Relatively new to the market are electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes. “Vaping”, as it is known by users, has become increasingly more attractive as an alternative to traditional, cancer causing, cigarettes. Although sales of e-cigarettes are estimated to reach $2 billion dollars (Dennis, Brady) this year, many Americans still have reservations about the safety of a new nicotine delivery system.

With many decades worth of health data now available, it has never been clearer that smoking is one of the most dangerous habits a person can engage in. It is no wonder, then, that so many smokers are committed to quitting and improving their health.

E-cigarettes appear as an innocent alternative to the real thing but the Food and Drug Administration issued an advisory identifying the “volatile” substances in the device and its emitted smoke may not be that harmless after all (“FDA: Second-Hand Smoke From E-Cigarettes May Be Harmful To Your Health”, 2013). Electronic cigarettes contain organic substances including propylene glycol, flavors, and nicotine which are emitted as a mist into the air in enclosed areas. FDA studies show that these microscopic liquid particles have the possibility of penetrating deep into our lungs. Also cited by the FDA in a German publication on electronic cigarettes shows

ENDS are widely available at retail outlets such as mall kiosks in shopping malls, online stores, gas stations, and several other locations (5). Marketed as an alternative to nicotine delivery and advertised as a smoking cessation tool, products such as e-cigarettes, e-hookahs, e-cigars, various flavored e-liquids, and other ENDS components are readily sold. While the average concentration of nicotine resulting from smoking traditional cigarettes was found to be 10 times greater than that of ENDS, the perceived risks and health benefits of these products as being safe alternatives or cessation devices have caused controversy (6).