Essay on the article Tobacco and Tolerance: Blowing smoke (о вреде курения)

Международный институт экономики и
финансов,1 курс,

Высшая Школа Экономики.

on the article
“Tobacco and Tolerance: Blowing smoke”.

   Not only
labour made man differ from a monkey, but also care and attention to his fellow
creatures. This is the main point of human relations and the basis of human
being. Animals are first of all competitors with each other, and they do not
have an instinct to help their neighbours and to think about their safety. The
only exception is their own cubs.

   Similarly, as
a father and mother take care of a small child who does not yet have his own
opinion on what is good and what is bad, who do not even know, that many
seemingly innocent things harm his health greatly and cause strong addiction.
Even when a child realises that, it is very hard for him to make the right
decision. And if we consider such thing as smoking, the only right decision is
not to start it. One may argue that whether to smoke or not is the private
decision of every person and no one might impose his point of view to someone.
I agree with this statement, but not always this principle provides us with a
solution to the problem of social wellbeing. People make a lot of decisions
connected with great risks like motorcycle riding, parachute jumping, smoking, taking
drugs and so on. Some of these things have unalterable consequences, which make
people regret they have made these decisions during the rest of their lives.
The only thing they should ask themselves is whether this thing is worth
risking. The fewer would be the number of activities that greatly harm human
health, and above all, of these, which are not worth risking like smoking, the
better it would be for the health of all humanity. The exceptions are such
things as scuba diving or mountain climbing and other, because they can be
justified from many reasons and they are not simple and stupid self-poisoning.
I do not agree with the author of the article “Tobacco
and Tolerance: Blowing smoke” that smoking is not a social problem but a
private one and the anti-smoking program should be minimized. Those people, who
have already started and have become addicted to ‘the grayish-blue fumes’ can’t
fully realize, why do they take this great risk, still acknowledging that this
harms their health, and it is hard for them to give up smoking without outside
help. For this noble purpose there should always exist those people who can
clearly realize this enormous threat as third persons with their unaddicted
minds. They should never stop such hard and unappreciated occupations as
different anti-smoke programs and, whether smokers want it or not, they should
try to pull them out of this ‘gray and poisonous swamp’. This can be done by
different government merciless limitations of tobacco producing companies,
tobacco advertisements, restricting places for smoking to minimum and so on.
That is why smoking is a problem of the whole society, despite some of its
members think that it is not, because healthy persons form a healthy society.

   Smoking causes (or, if
someone would be lucky, it might cause) many different illnesses like lung and
mouth cancer, heart disease, oral cavity. In general, the risk of developing a
tobacco-related cancer depends on the intensity of the habit as determined by a
duration of the smoking habit, a number of cigarettes smoked per day, a
tar content of the cigarette, and the depth of inhalation. Cigarette smoking is
not only related to the development of lung cancer but also affects the
development of cancer of the bladder, oral cavity, and esophagus. A
non-smoker’s inhalation of smoke produced by smokers in an enclosed space also
appears to heighten the risk of developing lung cancer. That is why the problem
of passive smoking is also very actual and to avoid harmful consequences,
governments of all countries ought to enlarge the development of a program of
making isolated places for smokers to enjoy their dangerous toys without any
harm to other people.

   After
the major medical revelations about smoking during the 1950s and '60s
there was an increasing attempt to lessen the influence of tobacco advertising
in several countries. Cigarette manufacturers in Canada agreed to end
television advertising in 1972 after a bill to effect that end was passed in
the Commons. In West Germany television advertising of cigarettes was to be
phased out by the end of 1972.And as a result, the rate of smoking in America
has declined from more than 40% to about 25% and the number of ex-smokers has
trebled. This was the great victory of anti-smoking programs. 

   In fact, a
tobacco-producing industry is very profitable, and of course, these companies
try to find or sometimes to invent some evidences and reasons why people need
to use their harmful production. I believe that the anti-smoking programs cause
great losses to them, and someday they will succeed and it would not be
profitable for producers to continue operating any more.