Thank God for public smoking ban

By Garth A. Rattray

Cigarette smoking is extremely addictive, for several reasons. Because of the effect on the brain, nicotine (and perhaps other substances in cigarette smoke) induces an extremely strong chemical need. Some scientists assert that nicotine is as addictive as heroin and cocaine.

Added to that is the psychological addiction of feeling the cigarette in the fingers and mouth, the feeling of the smoke in the airway, and the pleasant social activities (friends, alcohol, parties, clubs, unwinding, relaxation) that many associate with smoking cigarettes.

Although most - more than two in every three smokers want to quit, only about one in three tries and only four to seven per cent of those who try to quit are successful without help.

Smoking cigarettes remains legal worldwide even though it confers absolutely no positive health benefits. Instead, it is directly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 440,000 people annually in the USA alone.

The dubious distinction for mass-producing the modern, pre-rolled and pre-cut cigarette belongs to a 20th-century entrepreneur from Durham, North Carolina, James Buchanan (Buck) Duke. He, along with a mechanic, James Bonsack, produced so many cigarettes that they were forced to embark on a marketing campaign that ended up making the cigarette, as we know it, popular all over the world.

Cigarette smoke contains everything from orange oil extract and myrrh oil to hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, formaldehyde (an irritating chemical often used as a preservative ... including preserving dead bodies), and arsenic. Smokers are poisoning themselves - and whoever is inhaling their second-hand smoke.

Most people don't realise that there is also third-hand smoke - particulates and chemicals left over on solid surfaces after the cigarette is extinguished. As physicians, we see the effects of third-hand smoke fairly often whenever a smoker (who does not smoke around his/her asthmatic child/children) gets home and his/her smoke-infused clothes trigger asthma attacks.

Cigarettes, also called, 'cancer sticks', release more than 4,000 chemical compounds when burnt, 69 of which are carcinogenic. Smoking cigarettes can directly or indirectly (by second-hand smoke) cause emphysema, cancers in obvious places like the mouth, throat, lungs, oesophagus, stomach, and in not-so-obvious places like the bladder, and even contribute to cancer of the cervix.

Smoking can also cause asthma, rhino-sinusitis, hypertension, diabetic complications, major vascular problems like stroke, peripheral vascular disease, heart attacks and clots in the deep veins of the leg.

Raynaud's phenomenon

It can cause Raynaud's phenomenon - such poor circulation to the extremities (fingers, toes, feet, legs and even scrotum) that the affected part withers and dies. I have seen this twice in the office. This is not an exhaustive list of the diseases caused by smoking cigarettes.

Bad enough that the many pathologies associated with cigarette smoking make them the world's number-one group of preventable diseases; the economic clout of the industry is keeping it alive and well while it (ironically) causes sickness, suffering and death by hooking its users and recruiting more and more potential victims every day.

The really awful thing about this is that tobacco companies unconscionably and clandestinely target children and young teens. They are cognisant of the studies showing that some children experiment with cigarettes long before they are 11 years old. Most experiment at about 12 to 13 years of age. Cigarettes are so addictive, that about one-third of those who try smoking even one cigarette become hooked.

The younger that our children start experimenting with smoking cigarettes, the more likely it is that they will become hooked for life on the multiplicity of concoctions found in them. And, smoking cigarettes leads some to harder drugs.

Next week: The tobacco seduction of children.

Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garthrattray@gmail.com.