The Negative Effects Of Smoking And Health

Although tobacco consumption has decreased substantially since the 1900s, the effects of its history still remain. While smoking is less prevalent and consumers are more aware of its negative effects, individuals who were actively submersed in the smoking culture of the early 20th century continue to feel the affects of its health impairments1. Moreover, the health of past smokers need to be studied and evaluated in order to assess how to adequately improve their quality of life and health status. Therefore, the purpose of our study is to explore the effects of smoking history on self-reported health status. We aim to research how smoking history affects how individuals view their current state of health. By doing so, we may be …show more content…
Multiple decades’ worth of investigation and examination prove that smoking tobacco is inevitably toxic to one’s body2. Although this is now common knowledge, the facts pertaining to the effects of tobacco were not always so clear and well-known. During the early 20th century, individuals living in the United States not only consumed cigarettes, but fully embraced the product and embedded the habit of smoking into their everyday lives. The consumption of cigarettes began rapidly expanding during 1910 and continued to grow until 1990, reaching its peak in the 1960s. These increases were the result of revolutionary methods of tobacco promotion, the immense influence of the tobacco industry on politics, and the World Wars’ policies regarding the distribution of free cigarettes to allied troops. However, epidemiologic studies conducted during the late 1940s and early 1950s triggered concern, connecting smoking tobacco to diseases such as lung cancer3. On January 11, 1964, Luther Terry, the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, released the first report of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, noting that smoking was in fact detrimental to smokers’ health. Nearing the end of the 20th century, smoking rates decreased due to the rapidly increasing knowledge of the health effects associated with …show more content…
The relative knowledge of the effects of smoking, such as heart disease, cancer, lung disease, reproductive damage, and birth defects, have led to the active participation of health organizations, policy makers, private, and public sectors, in helping to control and reduce the use of tobacco. Prime examples of said involvement consist of the mandate of advertising the adverse health effects of smoking on cigarette packages, the newly approved age increase for purchasing cigarettes, as well as “no smoking” areas. The main focus of these initiatives and laws were to reduce the amount of exposure individuals had to cigarette