Negative Effects of Smoking on Human Health and the Economy

Smoking cigarettes has historically represented a leisurely and prominent activity that many people turn to in order to alleviate stress, lose weight, and fit in with an evolving social world. Tobacco contains nicotine, a highly addictive ingredient that renders it difficult to quit smoking once a person begins to ingest tobacco frequently (Woolbright 1994, p. 337). According to the CDC, however, cigarette smoking leads to more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States, which translates into one out of every five people dying from smoking tobacco. A preventable cause of death, smoking kills more people than alcohol use, illegal drug use, motor vehicle accidents, gun-related deaths, and the HIV virus combined (Center For Disease Control and Prevention). Women who smoke incur even more health problems that harm not only their own reproductive health but also their children's mortality and morbidity (American Lung Association). People should not smoke because it not only causes adverse health effects but it is not economically beneficial. If people stopped smoking, many lives would both directly and indirectly be saved as a result. People should quit smoking because of the plethora of negative consequences it incurs, as it endangers both those who directly smoke the cigarettes as well as their family and friends. Smoking not only causes adverse health risks but also straps people economically due to high medical costs as well as taxes and insurance increases as a result of poor health.

People, especially females, often begin smoking because they believe that it will help their lose weight as well as alleviate stress and anxiety they feel. The tobacco industry targets women in its advertisement, projecting smoking as an avenue through which they would achieve desirable slimness and thus become socially desirable (American Lung Association). Smoking advertisements feature attractive, slim women in order to encourage other women and young teenagers to embrace smoking as an activity that conveyed their independence (American Lung Association). In 2008, approximately 21.1 million women in the United States smoked, many of them teenage girls who sought to control their weight gain and emulate the glamorous and independent women they saw in the advertisements. One study demonstrates that both adolescent girls and boys viewed smoking as a viable mechanism to suppress their appetite and control their weight. Tomeo, Field, Berkey, Colditz, and Frazier (1999) interviewed 16,862 children between the ages of nine and fourteen in order to analyze the connections between behaviors concerning weight control, weight concerns, contemplation about or the initiation of smoking cigarettes. They concluded that the onset of smoking during adolescence directly relates to concerns about weight and encouraged that parents and schools "dispel the notion of tobacco use as a method of weight control" (Tomeo, Field, Berkey et al 1999, p. 924). Moreover, smokers often justify their habit as a means of reducing "negative moods" such as anxiety, stress, anger or depression (Kassel, Paronis, Stroud 2003, p. 270). Kassel, Paronis, and Stroud (2003) examined if this conceptualization proved valid through an extensive review of extant literature. They conclude that the relationship between negative attitudes and nicotine intake remains complex. Moreover, smoking may worsen an emotional response rather than alleviate it, depending on context and circumstances (Kassel, Paronis, Stroud 2003, p. 293). Thus, people's motives for smoking prove illusory in their success and must be outweighed against the adverse impact smoking has on the human body.

Doctors and experts point to the health risks caused by smoking, especially the statistics regarding the link between smoking and death, in order to advocate for people to quit smoking. In the past fifty years, the risk of death in both male and female smokers has greatly increased (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). According to the CDC, Smoking causes various diseases, harming almost every bodily organ and reducing the general health of avid smokers. The risk of developing coronary heart disease, other cardiovascular ailments, and stroke--the leading causes of death in the United States--increases almost two to four times because smoking damages blood vessels by thickening and narrowing them. These effects result in a rapid heartbeat, which elevates a person's blood pressure and renders them vulnerable to blood clots. If blood clots hinder blood from reaching a person's heart, they become at risk for a heart attack because the heart lacks access to adequate oxygen and thus heart muscle dies. Blood clots can also result in a stroke because they can prevent blood from flowing to the brain. Quitting smoking even after only one year drastically reduces a person's risk of incurring deteriorating cardiovascular health. Additionally, smoking is directly linked to respiratory disease because it damages airways and alveoli, or the tiny air vacs, located in the lungs. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), bronchitis, and emphysema are common lung diseases smokers suffer from. Moreover, experts link smoking to many cancers and serves as the primary causes of lung cancer in long-time smokers. Smoking, however, can cause various other forms of cancer, including cancer in the bladder, stomach, liver, pancreas, oropharynx and kidneys. Smoking not only poses these risks to smokers themselves but also to those surrounding them. Second-hand smoke, according to the CDC, causes 34,000 deaths in non-smokers who develop cardiovascular diseases and almost 8,000 premature deaths by stroke (2). They also increase the risk for developing lung cancer by almost thirty percent, and their risk for heart attack also greatly increases (2). Doctors estimate that if nobody in the United States, near one out of every three deaths caused by cancer in the United States would not occur (1).

Moreover, smoking particularly adversely affects women's reproductive health, and smoke exposure on children has had detrimental and some sometimes fatal effects on children. Many studies have examined and outlined the adverse effects of maternal smoking on both the mother as well as on the baby and/or infant ( Hofhuis, de Jongste, & Merkus, 2003 & Woolbright 1994). Many states such as Alabama required documentation on birth certificates of tobacco use of mothers (Woolbright, 1994). Despite the Surgeon general's warning that maternal smoking may result in premature birth, fetal injury, or dangerously low birth rate, fifteen to thirty-seven percent of pregnant women still smoke (Hofhuis, de Jongste, & Merkus, 2003). Mothers who smoke often engage in other high risk behaviors that also affect the health of their infants; furthermore, factors including marital and socio-economic status as well as education attained influence the outcome of pregnancies as a result of increased susceptibility to smoking (Woolbright 1994, p. 330). Low birth weight remains the primary effect of maternal smoking, although the existing literature points to premature birth and infant death as a major consequence of it as well. Infant exposure to tobacco after birth puts the child at risk of death through respiratory diseases and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Woolbright, 1994). Hofhuis, de Jongste, and Merkus (2003) closely examined how smoking during pregnancy as well as passive smoking thereafter impacted the morbidity and mortality in children. Statistics point to other obstetric complications as a result of smoking which includes spontaneous abortions, ectopic pregnancies, premature rupture of membranes, and complications with the placenta. It hinders the lung growth necessary for fetuses in utero, which results in weakened lungs for the child after birth and sharply increases the child's chance of suffering from asthma and other debilitating respiratory diseases. Furthermore, it affects brain development and behavior and lowers intellectual acuity. Many studies link maternal smoking to the acquisition of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder in their children. Thus, the mortality and well-being of children directly corresponds to whether their mother engaged in prenatal and/or postnatal smoking. Children must be protected from smoke exposure, which calls for the need for policies to prevent pregnant mothers from smoking.

Smoking not only results in the onset of other health debilitations but also indirectly and drastically affects others who do not smoke, which should encourage people to quit smoking before they become addicted to it. Beyond the debilitating effects of secondhand smoking, smoking, according to the CDC reduces fertility in men by altering male sperm, which increases the risk for losing the pregnancy or the baby being born with several birth defects. It also adversely impacts a person's teeth and gums, causing them to lose several teeth because they become weakened. Experts also link smoking to a person's risk of getting cataracts and other forms of eye degeneration that makes it harder for people to see. Moreover, it causes other health problems such as rheumatoid arthritis and type 2 diabetes and increases a person's risk by almost forty percent of developing diabetes in smokers over their lifetime. Overall, smoking weakens a person's immunity and can cause inflammation throughout their body (Centers For Disease Control and Prevention). Finally, smoking affects a person's overall appearance, often damaging one's hair, increasing the risk of them developing psoriasis, a skin ailment, and wrinkling of the skin which makes them look old prematurely (American Lung Association). The plethora of medical problems caused by smoking should discourage people from smoking as a form of weight loss program or stress reliever.

These various health problems caused by smoking greatly impacts one's economic situation not only through medical costs but also because cigarettes are pricey and greatly taxed. Several studies examine the medical costs of smoking in the United States and the "economic burden that smoking imposes on a society" (Warner, Hodgson, & Carroll 1999, p. 290). According to Warner, Hodgson and Carroll (1999), many health insurers and state governments as well as other countries have filed lawsuits against the tobacco industry as a result of increased healthcare costs induced by smoking tobacco. Many smokers within the United States depend on financial assistance from state governments through Medicaid, a healthcare system that assists low-income families. Eventually, the tobacco industry settled the various state lawsuits in Mississippi, Minnesota, Florida and Texas and agreed to pay thirty six billion dollars within a twenty-five year period (Bloch, Daynard, Roemer, 1998). The medical literature Warner, Hodgson, and Carroll (1999) examined regarding the medical costs of smoking-related ailments reveal that approximately eight percent of a person's personal medical care costs is used to treat illnesses, diseases and deadly conditions attributed to smoking, mainly lung cancer, COPD, and heart disease. These numbers, however, do not reflect the costs of other less severe ailments that result from exposing to smoking tobacco. Nonetheless, they reveal that medical costs represent one strain of the financial burden smoking puts on people not only in the United States but worldwide.

Despite the abundance of literature that supports the notion that smoking burdens the American healthcare system and economy, other authors posit that because smokers die younger they actually save the country money because they forgo medical costs they would have incurred in the future. According to Warner, Hodgson and Carroll (1999), the idea that, reduced by the cost of healthcare for non-smokers who reach old-age, the total medical costs of smoking tobacco actually produces a surplus of money for the state. This counter-argument was first proffered in 1983 by Leu and Schaub, two Swiss economists who believed that non-smoking Swiss men who lived longer had higher medical expenses than Swiss men who smoked and had their lives shortened by tobacco use. This argument spawned various studies that aimed at proving that although they lived less years in comparison with non-smokers, smokers had such high annual medical costs that they outweighed the costs of old-age healthcare for non-smokers (Hodgson, 1992). Although this issue continues to be debated, it nonetheless remains clear that tobacco has both human and financial burdens within the context of the diseases it causes and should serve as an influencing factor in people choosing not to smoke.

Beyond just medical costs, smoking-related health problems and deaths lead to absenteeism in the work force which results in a loss of economic productivity and further financially strains smokers and their families. Ault, Ekelund, Jackson, Saba and Saurman (1991) examined the causes of absenteeism in the workforce and found that smokers miss work about thirty-two percent more than non-smokers, which totals to about eighty-one million days of work lost per year in the United States. However, they concluded that smoking alone and its detrimental consequences do not account for absenteeism alone. Those who smoke often engage in other high risk activities such as alcoholism and are younger, blue-collar workers (Ault, Ekelund, Jackson, Saba and Saurman, 1991). These groups statistically miss more work, which complicates the nexus between workplace absenteeism and smoking tobacco (Ault, Ekelund, Jackson, Saba and Saurman, 1991). Other studies show that non-smokers experience greater productivity in the work place than current smokers, which often strains smokers financially as a result of the loss of salary (Centers For Disease Control And Prevention). On a smaller scale, smoking is high in cost and can be a financial burden to the user as well as a detriment in the realm of insurance policy (Brown, 1994). The government has levied heavy taxes on cigarettes, which has hiked up their costs. The average pack of cigarettes costs four dollars, but prices vary throughout the United States (Brown, 1994). Furthermore, insurance companies strain smokers with penalties for their lifestyle choices. Employers' insurance rates often rise of the employer identifies an employee as a smoker. Often times life insurance can be raised or denied if someone smokes cigarettes (Brown, 1994). Thus, smoking has adverse effects on the economy at large as well as the personal financial conditions of smokers and their families.

A highly addictive activity, smoking cigarettes had emerged during the modern era as a means of controlling weight through the suppression of appetite, alleviating negative attitudes and stress, and asserting one's glamour, independence, and social desirability. Young boys and girls begin contemplating cigarette use during adolescence because they believe it will help them maintain their weight despite evidence that points to the contrary. Moreover, avid smokers claim that smoking helps them cope during emotionally distressing times. However, these justifications for smoking pale in comparison with the adverse health effects directly and indirectly associated with smoking tobacco. It remains a leading cause of preventable death in the United States both for smokers and non-smokers who still suffer similar ailments as a result of smoke exposure. Cardiovascular diseases and various cancers continue to plague American society as a result of the popularity of smoking cigarettes. Mothers who smoke put their babies at risk of low birth weight, premature birth, and infant death if they are exposed to smoking after birth. Beyond dire health consequences, smoking is high in cost. It financially burdens smokers not only through medical costs incurred from health problems associated with smoking but also because of the sheer costs of purchasing cigarettes to sustain one's addiction. It becomes obvious that the negatives outweigh anyone's motives to continue smoking. Public discourse and advertising must articulate and convey the disadvantages and ugly side of smoking so that people are well-informed before they decide to begin smoking cigarettes.

References

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