Aamir Khan
English 1A
10/02/2009
I choose to write about the health problems associated with smoking tobacco because, until relatively recently, smoking was widely believed to have no, or very little, health problems. It is important that everyone is aware of the deadly health risks of smoking tobacco before trying it. Smoking is responsible for more deaths than any other product sold to consumers today. Currently, the most deadly disease is cancer, and the most common type of cancer, lung cancer, is caused by smoking tobacco. However, it is not just the people using the cigarettes who are prone to get this murderous disease, but even innocent bystanders. Second-hand smoking can be just as harmful as smoking tobacco itself.
During the early years in the film industry, movies, such as Casablanca of the 1940’s, portrays the hero, in this case the Humphrey Bogart character, as continuously lighting up a cigarette like there was no tomorrow. The film industry continued to portray its main characters that way until, I would say, about the 1980’s when the American culture began to understand that smoking is actually bad for one’s health. And certain movies, such as Easy Rider of the 1960‘s, portray smoking as cool and appealing. Hollywood greatly influences the populace, but it is also a great way to understand the history at a certain time, to study the culture, traditions, political ideology, and the general way people behaved at that time. These films portray the American culture very well in the 1940’s to the 1960’s and that is Americans smoked--a lot.
Though the sale of tobacco products has radically plummeted in America, the sales in other developed nations and emerging one’s has not. In fact roughly 1 out of every 3 person’s worldwide smoke, that’s 1.5 billion people. It is estimated that 105 billion cigarettes are sold every week. Either these people are oblivious to the health risks of smoking, or they simply don’t have the knowledge of it....