Download Click here to MA#1(Portfolio)

Park 1
Jinwu Park
Instructor: TJ Walker
English 131Z
December 10, 2012
Regulation on Tobacco
Still today, all over the world, smokers are drastically affecting our society, causing
health issues. I am a smoker who has been trying to quit smoking for the last few years. Tobacco
is as strongly addictive as heroine or marijuana. I started smoking through curiosity but that first
smoke made me addicted to tobacco. Smoking should not be a publically accessible choice
because the outcome of smoking is out of control whether you regret starting to smoke or not.
The government should be more aggressive towards regulating smoking tobacco to prevent
increase of diseases caused from smoking and help smokers who wants to quit.
In order to warn smokers from getting diseases from tobacco, the government decided to
put warnings on each pack of cigarettes. This pack of Belmont cigarettes, for example, is
warning smokers with a provocative comment saying “Each year, the equivalent of a small city
dies from tobacco use”. The image is advertising the Belmont cigarettes but at the same time it is
discouraging smoking by warning the outcomes of smoking. According to World Health
Organization’s research, “A comprehensive ban on all tobacco advertising, promotion and
sponsorship could decrease tobacco consumption by an average of about 7%, with some
countries experiencing a decline in consumption of up to 16%.” Bans on advertising tobacco
relatively helps in reducing the number of smoker. Despite of all the negative facts about the
tobacco, there is still a significant amount of people in the world tend to keep smoking.
Park 2
The Health Canada suggested the data of estimated deaths in Canada in 1996 on the
product. The data shows that tobacco kills more than murders, alcohol, car accidents and suicides.
Smoking increases the risk of dying from cancers of the lung, esophagus, larynx, and oral cavity.
According to statistics from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the United States,
“443,000 people die from smoking and 49,400 deaths per year from secondhand smoke
exposure.”
Why do smokers easily buy another pack of cigarettes regardless of such warnings?
Smokers keep smoking because nicotine is too addictive to quit. The nicotine in cigarettes is
poisonous and very addictive. According to National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) website,
“Nicotine is so powerful that the scant 1 to 2mg a smoker inhales from each cigarette is enough
to turn into an addiction.” The nicotine easily triggers our brain to desire nicotine. This is why it
is hard to quit smoking. Strong addiction is not something we can easily do by will but
regulations from outside. Such a strong addiction makes smokers to smoke wherever they want
to smoke which harms the non-smokers getting diseases from secondhand smoke.
Who is responsible for non-smokers getting unintended threats in their health? Smokers
are unwelcomed in public because of secondhand smoke. Smoking is dangerous for people who
do not smoke as well. Breathing secondhand smoke has immediate effects on heart disease and
development of lung cancer. The website called “American Cancer Society” notes that “research
has uncovered more than 7,000 chemical compounds in secondhand smoke; 250 of which are
known to be poisonous and upwards of 70 are known to cancer.” Smoking in public not only
causes a health problem to smokers but also to non-smokers around. Prohibiting smoking in
public may significantly reduce the number of people suffering from diseases caused from
secondhand smoke.
Park 3
How did disease causing smokers become a smoker? The smokers are not forced to
smoke but it is made by their choice usually from peer pressure or curiosity. According to
quitsmoking.com, quitting smoking statistics tells us that “nearly 70 percent of smokers want to
quit smoking.” Smokers are likely to say they love smoking more than any other habits but not
every smoker is satisfied with a habit of smoking. However, the consumers are willing to keep
buy the product because they are addicted to nicotine which is hard to get a way out of it. The
smokers need help from others in order to be free nicotine. The president Barack Obama took
five years to quit smoking. Such man with strong will power to be the president of United States
even had hard times quitting smoking. As addictive as it is, smoking is not matter of personal
choice especially to young people. Some people may start to smoke purely on personal curiosity
but others may be affected from social forces. In Korean grown ups’ society, for example, it is
common culture for men to gather and smoke when they drink, work, train in the army or even
play sports. If you are a non-smoker, it is easy to feel that you are left out from a group all of
sudden. The social pressure also plays a negative key role in provoking a non-smoker to start
thinking about smoking.
What kind of regulations would be effective to be nicotine free? First of all, the
government should do a better job of educating people about the dangers of nicotine addiction
especially to young people who tend to underestimate the health risks. Young people smoke to
look mature so they can act older like they see their parent and relatives or from peer pressure to
be accepted. Also they smoke because of the excitement of doing something that is forbidden. If
teens easily make a choice to smoke, the smoking population and its industry will continue to
grow. It is important to make smoke-free environment around young people otherwise it will be
difficult for young people to take advice when smokers are around. The smoking populations
Park 4
will likely to less increase over time if we continue to educate young people by informing that
smoking is undesirable, personally and socially. For example, a patient suffering from nicotine
caused disease coming to a class as a speaker explaining that smoking can seriously have a
negative impact on one’s life would greatly affect the young people away from attempt to smoke.
Secondly, tobacco should be regulated in terms of smoking area and legal age. If smoking
causes more deaths than alcohol why is legal age to smoke under 21? And can be purchased at
any time? Cigarettes should be restricted as much as alcohol by raising legal age and time. As a
result, smokers as well as non-smokers would be less likely to expose to harmful smoke in public.
Hopefully, a population of smokers and patients suffering from cancer decrease each year.
Lastly, a higher tobacco taxes will reduce consumption in tobacco as well as health risk
from addiction. If cigarettes cost more, less people are likely to continue to buy cigarettes. In
consequence, a higher tobacco taxes will reduce consumption. As one of the consequence of
such restriction, this will affect the low-income Americans the most since they relatively occupy
the most percentage of smoking population according to International Tobacco Evidence
Network, “low income groups smoke more and spent higher proportion of their income on
tobacco.” Raising tobacco tax will also hurt the poor who cannot afford to buy cigarettes.
Raising tobacco tax will reduce the contribution of the poor to the total tobacco profits.
In 1971, cigarette ads were banned from the TV screen and radio but the tobacco industry
spent billions of dollars to promote cigarette through other media such as magazines and
newspapers. Tobacco advertisements were banned because the ads were used to attract people to
smoke which causes health issues in society. When the cigarette advertising was banned, the
tobacco industry and its advertisers argued that prohibiting advertisement of tobacco is violating
Park 5
fundamental moral rights. Does society have a right to ban the advertising of cigarettes? Antismokers may argue that everyone has a basic right to freedom of expression but only as long as it
has no harms to others. Those opposed to advertising tobacco also argue that society has a duty
to protect the individuals not to be deceived or manipulated from getting exposed to nicotine
addiction. They oppose to tobacco advertisement because tobacco advertisement could easily
attract people and form social pressure to smoke which only will result chaos in our health.
Why cigarettes are not publicly banned like other drugs? According to
smokingaloud.com which proposes interesting point on “why not ban cigarettes outright?” the
government, doctors, lawyers and health care industries does not want to ban tobacco because
tobacco companies give them more money than any other industry or special interest in the
nation. Tobacco companies pay more taxes than any other industry and they will continue to be
grown and cigarettes will continue to be sold. Health care industries will profit themselves from
“recovering health costs”. Not all doctors and lawyers may be oppose to banning smoking since
they are supposed to be ones who care about people’s health and protect under law rather than
desire for more money. Isn’t the government banning tobacco for their people’s health is a right
thing to do regardless of their profits? And yet, tobacco industry is full of money and if cigarettes
were banned, the economy right now might not be able to handle a removal of such a high profit
industry.
The website specialized in news and information on tobacco, tobacco.org, notes that
“414,000 jobs are directly linked to tobacco industry; another 296,000 jobs derive from allied
industries with these individuals spending their income to support another 1.6million US workers.
Roughly ten billion dollars are annually raised in direct federal, state and local tax dollars.” The
impact of tobacco industry have on our economy cannot be ignored since provide a lot of jobs
Park 6
which relates to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In order to solve the health issues caused from
tobacco, we need alternate product that can substitute nicotine addiction such as nicotine-free
digital cigarettes or industry in terms of high profit industry.
This claim has been argued over many years from different point of views. However,
with such strong nicotine addiction and a high profit contribution to economy is blocking our
way to solve this. As we keep on argue over the issue, increasing number of people are suffering
from diseases caused from smoking. I believe the government need to take a step forward by
educating people, especially teens, on seriousness of nicotine addiction and regulating smoking
with more restrictions. I hope all smokers who are trying to quit smoking succeed in their goals
for healthier society. Also the society should not be generous towards smoking because it is
passed the level of freedom of choice.
Park 7
Works Cited
American Cancer Society. What is Secondhand Smoke? Web. Oct.24, 2012
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/tobaccocancer/secondhand-smoke
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fast Facts on smoking and tobacco use. Web.
Aug 21, 2012
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm
Healthy Living. Smoking Statistics / Quitting Smoking. Web.
http://quitsmoking.pharmacydiscountrx.com/stats.html
International Tobacco Evidence Network. Will Tobacco Control Hurt the Economy?
Hana Ross, Ph. D.
http://www.tobaccoevidence.net/pdf/sea_activities/kl_may05.pdf
National Institute on Drug Abuse. How Does Tobacco Deliver Its Effects? Web. July,
2012
http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-addiction/howdoes- tobacco-deliver-its-effects
Smoking Aloud. Why not Ban Cigarettes Outright? Web.
http://www.smokingaloud.com/ban-cigarettes.html
Tobacco News and Information. Tobacco.org. Web. Larry Breed.
http://archive.tobacco.org/resources/history/strategieslb.html
"Tobacco." WHO. World Health Organization, May 2012. Web. 08 Dec. 2012.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/index.html