Cancer
Lung cancer is the largest cause of cancer deaths. 85 percent of it is due to cigarette smoking. A cigarette smoker is 10 times more at risk than the non-smoker. After contracting lung cancer, a smoker will not live for more than 5 years. For instance, a person who smokes two packets a day inhales deeply. He starts early and is at greater risk of getting lung cancer. Cancer deaths begin to increase rapidly after the age of 35, proving that it takes approximately 20 years between exposure and manifestation of tumour.
A person who takes alcohol along with his cigarettes runs five times more risk and is likely to develop cancer of the oral cavity, larynx and oesophagus. Chewing tobacco or snuff have been linked to cancer of cheek and gum.
The frequent use of pan masala can cause sub-mucous fibrosis. Dr. V.P. Goyal of Meerut Medical College adds that most sufferers, young men and women, who use different brands of pan masala, initially as a fashion, later become addicted to it. The frequent use of pan masala causes the inner skin of the mouth to become hard.
Chest disease
Most of the cigarette smokers get cough, commonly called smoker’s cough. Later it develops into bronchitis and emphysema. By the age of sixty, they develop some degree of emphysema. They have short breath. This is why sportsmen are asked not to smoke as smoking decreases their efficiency. Cessation of cigarette smoking helps in the reversal of the process.
Risk for women
Modern women are willing to do the work men do, they take all responsibilities and pressures of men. They pay the price for it. The number of heart attacks among women has increased.
The risk factor depends upon the number of cigarettes smoked. In India, few women smoke. So they run a lesser risk. Smoking affects pregnancy. Smoking mother’s children are smaller in weight, length and head circumference. There is a higher infant mortality rate than among non-smoking mothers. A study days congenital birth diseases are more prevalent in the urban population. In urban areas the incidence is one out of 156 (0.64 per cent) births, while it is one out of 170 birth (0.59 per cent) in the rural areas.
Tobacco smoking chewing and betel leaf chewing found to be factors responsible. Adulterated food and a polluted environment also take a heavy toll in the urban population. This study was conducted on 42,000 births in Calcutta by a group of gynaecologists, and obstetricians. Mothers who smoke and use oral contraceptive increase the risk of cardio-vascular disease by 30 times.
Peptic Ulcer
Smokers fall prey to peptic and gastric ulcers more frequently. Their healing rate also slows down. Tobacco is a cash crop. Millions of people are employed in growing tobacco and manufacturing cigarette all over the world. Tobacco companies earn billion of dollars as profits. The economy of several countries on the export of tobacco. Politics has been revolving around tobacco production for centuries. Tobacco, is part of American history. It financed the American revolution.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were of the view that to attack tobacco was to attack the foundation of America itself. The tobacco industry has spent millions to prove that tobacco smoking is harmless and used all subterfuges to hide the facts. As a lot of money was being collected as taxes by many nations nobody seemed to be in too great a hurry to ban smoking even though they knew it was injurious to health.
In 1957 smoking was conclusively first associated with lung cancer. In 1965 the U.S. Government prescribed that cigarette packets should carry labels warning the users against its possibility of causing cancer due to smoking. In 1969 the U.S. Government banned cigarette advertisement on the television. The U.S. surgeon general report which was released on 24th February 1986, there could also be a link between smoking cigarette and cancer of stomach and cervix.
The study showed that those who chewed tobacco stood four times as much risk of getting cancer as those who did not. The study of the environment effects of cigarette smoke on non-smokers was sufficient to project this as a public health hazard. The smoker’s wife has more risk of getting cancer. And their children run the risk of getting bronchitis.
Filters in the cigarettes were introduced to attract female smokers, by offering them a cigarette whose end did not get soggy. Now, low-tar cigarettes are being provided to reduce the risk. A tar yield of 37 mgm in 1954 brought down to 14 mgm in 1982. Unfortunately this decline in tar yield was not matched with the drop in the incidence of cancer. Many veteran smokers compensated the decline in the yield of tar by increasing the number of cigarettes smoked per day or smoking more deeply thus exposing themselves to more smoke and for a longer period.