Health Effects of Smoking Essay Sample

Smoking has been a cause for concern for years now. Numerous research and data have been amassed on the subject of smoking and health worldwide.  Over 7,000 research papers have been reviewed by the office of the Surgeon General of the United States Health Service on the topic of smoking and its relation to health, and publicly recognized the role of smoking in various diseases, involving diverse types of cancers specifically in the lungs. Since then, many studies have been published that corroborate the association of smoking with a variety of adverse human health effects such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. However, according to medical studies, not only does, smoking harms the smoker, but it has also been proven to endanger non-smokers. The action of inhaling smoke produced by others is recognized as passive smoking (secondhand smoke exposure).  Passive smoking has been a public health concern due to the observed increase in risk for respiratory diseases, coronary heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Additionally, according to the 1964 Surgeon General’s report, almost 2.5 million adults who were nonsmokers died due to breathing secondhand smoke. Consequently, these data clearly show the hazardous effect on the health of innocent people which is why smoke-free laws that veto smoking in public places is crucial. Furthermore, in a study published on September 29, 2009, issued by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers discovered that smoking bans can reduce the number of heart attacks by as much as 26 percent annually. Following this discovery, is a statement made by David Meyers, M.D.H., professor of Cardiology and Preventive Medicine, University of Kansa School of Medicine and lead investigator of the study that also substantiates the discovery by stating “Public smoking bans seem to be tremendously effective in reducing heart attack and, theoretically, might also help to prevent lung cancer and emphysema, diseases that develop much more slowly than heart attacks. The cardiac benefits increased with longer ban duration."