Cigarette Smoking, If We Breath, We Smoke
Cigarette smoking is one of the acts that pose an extremely serious health risk on the part of the smoker. Irrespective of the fact that many people tends to view smoking in terms of the actual smoking, the act itself involves puffing the cigarette (tobacco) smoke and then releasing it into the air. Pragmatically therefore the environment in which the cigarette smokers exists is composed of tobacco contaminated air particles suspended in it. Ideally, cigarette smokers pose a great health risk not only to themselves but also to all those other people around them the latter of whom consistently breathe the air that the cigarette smokers contaminate with the drug in form of unconscious or passive smoking (Scholastic Choices, 2006:para. 3).
According to Paulos (2005: Para. 2) smoking while it poses very serious health hazards to the smokers which include and not limited to lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and other life-threatening illnesses as well as its physical effects such as smelly breath, yellow teeth, and breathing problems, it has a double effect on the smoker due to the fact second hand smoke usually has equality disastrous health effects. According to the latter therefore, since the second and smoke presents a lot of health hazard other contaminated air breather’s lives (whether smokers and non smoker) this is referred to as passive smoking or breathing in nicotine via interacting with the contaminated air or rather by breathing the air contaminated by second hand cigarette smoke. Kathleen (2008) asserts that passive smokers are equally at risk of the health hazards associated with smoking. Irrespective of the fact that the effect of the drug is greater on the first hard smokers themselves, Paulos, (2005) argues that the second hard smokers’ who breathe air contaminated with tobacco smoke were smokers too. She asserted that it was unreal for an individual therefore to argue that he or she was not a smoker when he or she constantly interacted or lived in an environment which is typically a tobacco smoker’s hub.
In her article entitled Sickly seconds Paulos (2005: Para 2) pointed out that by the virtue of mere breathing the smoke from someone else cigarette, it amounted to a form of unconscious substance abuse or rather smoking (passive) and that such pose serous health problem no different from the intentional cigarette smoking. As such, she pointed out that it was important for people to protect themselves from breathing in the second cigarette smoke A report released by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in 2004 (Scholastic Choices,2006) revealed that tobacco is one of the most heavily among the most addictive substances in the United States of America . According to the report in 2004 for instance, 70.3 million people used tobacco at least once in the month preceding the survey. According to the latter, Nicotine is the main ingredient in tobacco and was also contained din the second hard smoke which the smokers released in the air. As such, breathing of the second hand tobacco smoke amounted to smoking although the act in this case is passive. Many people have tended to underscore fact that breathing the second hand smoke from a cigarette smoker is itself smoking with potential health hazard similar to the risk presented to the intentional tobacco abusers.
Research reveals that just like first hand smokers, consistent breathing of cigarette smoke from a smoker could also be addictive (Kathleen, 2008). This is evidenced by the report presented by NIDA in 2004 and which reported that smoking prevalence rate was highest among individual who constantly interacted with smokers or merely lived in a tobacco smoking hub. Following that realization that breathing tobacco from other smokers amounted to passive smoking, authorities in the United States of America and beyond have reacted by instituting laws that control smoking in the public places with an objective of preventing nonsmokers from breathing in air contaminated with nicotine particles: a\the latter of which sis passive smoking and equally hazardous health wise.
However, breathing is not usually smoking especially if the air that we breathe is kept free of such contamination. As such, the latter amounts to passive smoking if and only if it has tobacco particle suspended in the air that an individual breath in due to second hand cigarette smoke having been released in to the immediate atmosphere by a careless first hand cigarette smoke. Consequently, cigarette smoking through breathing or rather passive smoking can be avoided by maintaining the air that we breathe clean and free from cigarette smoke. Despite the fact that it is challenging to achieve this objective since the air is not static, it can highly be controlled via strict laws that restricts smoking in the open or public places