Health effects of tobacco
[86] The use of electronic cigarettes may also lead to the development of head and neck cancers due to the substances like propylene glycol, glycerol, nitrosamines, and metals contained therein, which can cause damage to the airways.
[88] COPD caused by smoking is a permanent, incurable (often terminal) reduction of pulmonary capacity characterised by shortness of breath, wheezing, persistent cough with sputum, and damage to the lungs, including emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
[97] Smoking tobacco has also been linked to Buerger's disease (thromboangiitis obliterans), the acute inflammation and thrombosis (clotting) of arteries and veins of the hands and feet.
[124] The incidence of impotence (difficulty achieving and maintaining penile erection) is approximately 85 percent higher in male smokers compared to non-smokers.
[156][157][158][159] The high rate of smoking tobacco by the mentally ill is a major factor in their decreased life expectancy, which is about 25 years shorter than the general population.
[196] In the case of Parkinson's disease, a series of observational studies that consistently suggest a possibly substantial reduction in risk among smokers (and other consumers of tobacco products) has led to longstanding interest among epidemiologists.
[203] A data-driven hypothesis that long-term administration of very low doses of nicotine (for example, in an ordinary diet) might provide a degree of neurological protection against Parkinson's disease remains open as a potential preventive strategy.
According to studies by Henningfield and Benowitz, nicotine is more addictive than cannabis, caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, and heroin when considering both somatic and psychological dependence.
[citation needed] Recent evidence has shown that smoking tobacco increases the release of dopamine in the brain, specifically in the mesolimbic pathway, the same neuro-reward circuit activated by addictive substances such as heroin and cocaine.
[249] One study found that smokers exhibit better reaction-time and memory performance compared to non-smokers, which is consistent with increased activation of dopamine receptors.
[250] Neurologically, rodent studies have found that nicotine self-administration causes lowering of reward thresholds—a finding opposite that of most other addictive substances (e.g. cocaine and heroin).
It is involuntarily inhaled, lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished, and may cause a wide range of adverse health effects, including cancer, respiratory infections, and asthma.
[254] Studies have shown that exposure to second-hand smoke causes harmful effects on the cardiovascular system and is associated with prevalent heart failure among non-smokers.
[269] The water moisture induced by the hookah makes the smoke less irritating and may give a false sense of security and reduce concerns about true health effects.
Also, the study concluded that heavy hookah smoking (2–4 daily preparations; 3–8 sessions a day; >2 hrs to ≤ 6 hours) substantially raises CEA levels.
[42] As of 2002, about twenty percent of young teens (13–15) smoked worldwide, with 80,000 to 100,000 children taking up the addiction every day, roughly half of whom live in Asia.
The tobacco industry spends up to $12.5 billion annually on advertising, which is increasingly geared towards adolescents in the developing world because they are a vulnerable audience for the marketing campaigns.
Adolescents have more difficulty understanding the long-term health risks that are associated with smoking and are also more easily influenced by "images of romance, success, sophistication, popularity, and adventure which advertising suggests they could achieve through the consumption of cigarettes".
This shift in marketing towards adolescents and even children in the tobacco industry is debilitating to organizations' and countries' efforts to improve child health and mortality in the developing world.
[9] Presently, approximately 8 million individuals succumb to tobacco-related diseases annually, resulting in a significant economic burden of $1.4 trillion on the global scale each year.
"[309] The 1880s invention of automated cigarette-making machinery in the American South made it possible to mass-produce cigarettes at low cost, and smoking became common.
[17] It may be suggested that the chief reason that the subject has received so little attention from members of the medical profession is that the majority of them as of the general community practice smoking in one form of another, and do not wish to inquire too closely into a habit in defense of which so much can be said from the hedonistic but so little from the hygienic standpoint More observational evidence was published throughout the 1930s, and in 1938, Science published a paper showing that tobacco smokers live substantially shorter lives.
[14] The association of anti-tobacco smoking research and public health measures with the Nazi leadership may have contributed to the lack of attention paid to these studies.
[317] In 1947 the British Medical Council held a conference to discuss the reason for the rise in lung cancer deaths; unaware of the German studies, they planned and started their own.
[319][318] Early case-control studies clearly showed a close association between smoking and lung cancer, but contemporary doctors and scientists did not feel evidence existed for causality.
[321] In 1953, scientists at the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City demonstrated that cigarette tar painted on the skin of mice caused fatal cancers.
[317]: 14 On January 11, 1964, the United States Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health was published; this led millions of American smokers to quit, the banning of certain types of advertising, and the requirement of warning labels on tobacco products.
For a particular individual, it is impossible to definitively prove a direct causal link between exposure to a radiomimetic poison such as tobacco smoke and the cancer that follows; such statements can only be made at the aggregate population level.
Cigarette companies have capitalized on this philosophical objection and exploited the doubts of clinicians, who consider only individual cases, on the causal link in the stochastic expression of the toxicity as actual disease.
[324] There have been multiple court cases against tobacco companies for having researched the health effects of smoking, but having then suppressed the findings or formatted them to imply lessened or no hazard.
