Why Do 100 Adults Smoke Cigarettes

Words: 1264
Pages: 6

Justin Leung
UGS302
11 November 2015
Word Count: 1019
Drop it While its Hot
ROUGHLY eighteen out of every hundred adults smoke cigarettes in the United States (CDC). Of these people, about 480,000 die every year, making it the leading cause of preventable death (CDC; Woode, 2015). One way cigarettes kills is through lung cancer (Proctor, 2011; Cheng et al., 2015). Worldwide, 1.5 million people die from lung cancer every year (Proctor, 2011). Despite legal actions against the tobacco industry and smoking prevention programs today, this number will continue to grow (Siemiatycki et al., 2014; Proctor, 2011). This is due to the cigarette manufacture’s speed; machines can output 20,000 cigarettes every minute, making tobacco products readily available
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The process in which they are made is straightforward. Their manufacture can be split into 2 phases: the primary and secondary stages (HMRC). Tobacco processing occurs during the first stage, in which the tobacco is converted into a rod (HMRC). The second stage is primarily the manufacture and assembly of the cigarettes, including the addition of the filter and other classic components of a cigarette, as shown in Diagram 1 (HMRC; Oldham et al., 2013). Due to this streamlined process, cigarettes can be outputted at an extremely rapid rate. Diagram 1: Components of a cigarette (Oldham et al., 2013)
Chemicals
Although cigarettes require certain hazardous chemicals to manufacture, the chemical composition of its smoke is the root of the cigarette related health issues, such as lung cancer. This is because the number of chemicals in the cigarette does not translate to the number of chemicals in its smoke in a 1:1 fashion; instead, the number grows tremendously, growing from 600 chemicals, found in an unused cigarette, to over 4000 chemicals when smoked (Hecht, 2002). Through the combustion of the original 600 chemicals, many other chemicals emerge, such as acetone, which is found in nail polish remover, butane and hexamine, which is found in lighter fluid, and nicotine, which is also used as an insecticide (Hecht, 2002). Some of these combustion products are carcinogens, or chemicals which cause cancer. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,
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