TOBACCO & NICOTINE
What is Nicotine ?
Nicotine is the mainly used drug in all tobacco products. It acts as a stimulant and a sedative. Nicotine is one of the most heavily used, and most addictive drug in the U.S
The Risks ...
Whether it's smoked or chewed, nicotine is one of the most highly addictive drugs used today. Once you're hooked, it's extremely hard to overcome this addiction. Surveys have shown that most adult smokers first tried cigarettes during their teen years, and there is a direct relationship between early smoking and adult addiction. Smoking harms your immune system and can affect nearly every organ in your body. When you smoke, it's not only the nicotine that is very dangerous, but also chemicals in tobacco like carbon monoxide (poisonous gas), tar (tires), formaldehyde (used to preserve dead bodies), cyanide (deadly poison; used in making chemical weapons) and ammonia (household cleaner) -many of which are known carcinogens (cancer-causing poisons). Carbon monoxide causes the red blood cells from getting the enough amount of oxygen needed for healthy cellular growth. This helps the carcinogens in the tobacco products to combined with the cells throughout your body and cause cellular damage.
Chewing Tobacco
Chewing tobacco is just as dangerous and harmful to your body as smoking and also a high risk of addiction. Prolonged use of chewing tobacco leads to a high risk of cancers of the mouth or cancerous sores called Leukoplakia .
Long Term Effects
Between 1964 and 2004, cigarette smoking caused about 12 million deaths, including 4.1 million deaths caused by cancer, 5.5 million deaths caused by cardiovascular disease, 1.1 million deaths caused by respiratory disease and 94,000 deaths of new born babies due to mothers smoking during pregnancy. Even after 30 years of warnings on cigarette packages and tobacco products, tobacco continues to impact our health. In 2010, over 220,000 new types of lung cancer were reported, and more than 150,000 Americans died as a result of the disease.
The Bottom Line
Both smoking tobacco and smokeless tobacco are high carriers of the addictive drug nicotine. Once your body gets a taste of nicotine, you are easily addicted maybe for life, with highly fatal consequences. Although quitting smoking can be very difficult for most people at any age, the positive side is that by giving up tobacco and smoking for life, you can drastically improve your health and have less risk of cancer, heart disease or any other life-threatening diseases associated with tobacco or cigarette use.