Cigarette Smoking Outline

Speech Topic: Cigarette smoking is still the most preventable cause of death. As such, it remains important to spread awareness and education in order to prevent thousands of potential deaths due to smoking. 

Attention Grabber: HIV, illicit drug use, vehicle accidents, and incidents involving firearms account for thousands of deaths every year. But one legal habit causes more deaths than all of those put together. That habit is smoking cigarettes. 

1. Ever since the effects of smoking cigarettes became an increasingly researched subject, researchers, doctors, and scientists have observed a myriad of negative effects on individual who consistently smoke cigarettes. According to the Center for Disease Control, smoking causes 480,000 deaths each year in the United States alone (“Smoking & Tobacco Use” 1). 

2. United States citizens have died due to cigarette smoking than to the deaths in all wars fought by the United States combined.

3. 90% of all lung cancer originates from cigarette smoking. Further, the risk of dying from cigarettes has increased within the past fifty years.

4. According to the American Cancer Society, smoking often does not reveal adverse effects for several years in many users (“Health Risks of Smoking Tobacco” 6). This makes it a deadly killer as many individuals do not experience the worst effects of smoking during their first years of use, leading them to believe that they are immune from the host of negative effects that cigarette smoking causes. There are prescription medications used to curb smoking.

5. Cigarette smoking is also a contributing factor to many other types of cancer, including pancreatic cancer, stomach cancer, as well as cancer in the liver and rectum. Smokers also have a much greater risk of being obese as well as the risk of contracting fatal heart diseases (Sherman 1). Furthermore, smokers have a very high chance of contracting and dying from serious respiratory problems such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Those facing end-of-life have several options to ease suffering. 

Conclusion: These points demonstrate only a few of the many adverse health effects of cigarette smoking. As such, smoking should continue to be studied, and individuals should continue to warn others about the host of negative impacts that cigarette smoking can have on one’s health.

Works Cited

“Health Risks of Smoking Tobacco.” American Cancer Society, 2018, www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/tobacco-and-cancer/health-risks-of-smoking-tobacco.html.

Sherman, C B. “Health Effects of Cigarette Smoking.” Clinics in Chest Medicine., U.S. National Library of Medicine, Dec. 1991, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1747984.

“Smoking & Tobacco Use.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 May 2017, www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/effects_cig_smoking/index.htm.