Running head: SMOKING:FASHIONABLE VS BAD HEALTH 1

Smoking: Fashionable vs bad health

Tsering Sherpa

Lehman College

English Composition

Professor Debbie Hamilton

May 14, 2015

SMOKING:FASHIONABLE VS BAD HEALTH 2

Abstract

Knowing that smoking is bad for health,it has become a fashionable in the world. Smoking has

always been featured in the television, movies. Smoking in the media is portrayed as “cool” and

often shows the people who smoke as sexy and sophisticated. Tobacco companies portray

smoking with images of success, pleasure, relaxation and freedom. Since the media portrays a

harmful act like smoking to be glamorous, the youth is destined to try smoking (Wikipedia,

2015, para.13). Smoking among teenagers is the biggest issue that affects countries worldwide.

The National survey on drug use and health estimates that each day over 4,000 people under the

age of 18 try their first cigarette. This amounts to more than 730,000 new smokers each year.

The final report of the National Commission on Drug­Free Schools indicate that children and

adolescents consume more than one billion cigarette every year. According to economist

Kenneth Warner,PH.D, the tobacco industry needs 5,000 new young smokers every day in order

to maintain the total number of smokers. The US Department of Health and Human Services

estimates that 90% of smokers begin their tobacco usage before age 20 (Wikipedia,2015,p.1).

However, its being a fashion, smoking leads person’s life in a severe condition where they may

reach to the mouth of the death as a time goes by. Different people have their own opinion or

perspective in the same topic.So, this research paper is debatable about smoking being a

fashionable or a bad health.

SMOKING:FASHIONABLE VS BAD HEALTH 3

As I research, I found that “Bollywood” making smoking fashionable. A new study

commissioned by the World Health Organization accuses Bollywood, India's multi ­

billion­dollar film industry, of glamorizing smoking and thereby influencing young people to

take up the habit (VOA,2009).

According to the author of the study ,“Ambika Srivastava” all the glamorous film stars in

Indian movies are seen smoking and says the survey conducted among the young people show

that they are strongly impressed by what they see in silver screen (WHO,2009). This means as

the people see film star smoking in the television or movie, they will follow the same because

they think it's cool to smoke. They think if the movie stars smoke so why can’t they. As they

learn and try once, twice and so on, they will have a habit of smoking. They think it's cool to

smoke. They think if the movie stars smoke so why can’t they. As they learn and try once, twice

and so on, they will have a habit of smoking.

Several style and fashion magazines targeted at young people show models and

personalities smoking in their editorial pages, particularly in fashion spreads, and this has

SMOKING:FASHIONABLE VS BAD HEALTH 4

increased considerably over recent years (Amos, 1992). Fashion spreads within youth and

style magazines, by their nature, are synonymous with the promotion of consumption; they

literally sell styles by presenting them as desirably as possible. Such spreads promote the latest

fashion by placing models in specific contexts which reflect the images which they are trying to

portray. These 'stories' reflect the mythology portrayed in films, television and other media

which young people can identify with, and aspire to. According to Gidwani et al, the more hours

an adolescents spends near TV screen, the more chance is that she will begin to smoke. Lots of

movies, shows, and music videos depict smoking people as successful and loved ones.

Adolescents minds are much more vulnerable to such images than that of the grownups, so lots

of teenagers try smoking because they want to look cool, or look like their favourite star. In the

same time their subconsciousness accepts the image of happy, successful and loved smokers, and

concludes smoking is a necessary attribute of such a person.

The reason why smoking is more fashionable in young than in adults is because children

and young people take up smoking are complex and a relation has been shown between

awareness of advertising and under age smoking. Peer pressure, parental and sibling smoking

desire to look grown up and availability are all factors. By the age of 10, more than 28% children

have tried their first cigarette (Jacky chambers et al.,1991).

SMOKING:FASHIONABLE VS BAD HEALTH 5

Despite aggressive anti­smoking lobbies and regulations in many countries, fashion

stylists have continued to use smoking imagery to shock, or evoke historic ideas of glamour or

power. Maverick designer Tom Ford started the current wave in 2004 with a procession of suave

young blokes for Gucci: slicked hair, lean playboy suits, clinking whisky tumblers and fat cigars

clutched in manicured fingers. Gaultier is also a frequent offender, notorious for the cigar and

cigarette props on both his women's and men's wear catwalks and Marc Jacobs of Louis Vuitton

hired Kate Moss to puff expertly along his catwalk(Janice Breen Burns,2011,p.3).

According to BMA Board of Science, an individual’s personal influences including low

self esteem, lack of confidence and a heightened sense of vulnerability, can affect smoking

attitudes and behaviour. These needs tend to be matched by a heightened belief in the benefits of

smoking – that it can help in social situations, or is simply enjoyable. Regular smokers for

instance, are much more likely to feel that smoking can help you keep calm, compared with

nonsmokers. Young smokers and would­be smokers are also more likely to see tobacco as a

means of expressing rebellion, reducing boredom and controlling weight. Young people,

especially girls, have a desire to appear more mature and one way of projecting this image is to

start smoking. Research with teenage girls in England found that they believed they were

creating an ‘adult social identity’ and they valued being ‘cool’ and ‘popular’(Gerard Hastings

Kathryn Angus, 2008).

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In my opinion, although people find it cool, relaxation from smoking, it’s very hazardous

to health and it can lead a person to death with various diseases like lung cancer, chronic

pulmonary diseases, stroke, emphysema etc. Tobacco smoke contain literally thousand of

chemicals agents, including 60 constituents which are known as carcinogens, cocarcinogens or

tumor promoters (DHEW, 1879). Because the average smoker consumes about 30 cigarettes

daily the smoker is being subjected to a constant barrage of hazardous agents. The hazardous

ingredients in cigarette tobacco has many dangerous effects on your health and the health of

others. Cigarette smoke produces over 4000 chemicals by burning cigarette. At least 200

chemicals are known to be poisonous to people’s health (Clayman 50). As they smoke, they

inhale all the chemicals generated by burning and smoking. All these smaller toxic particles

make their way into the lungs and the body cells more easily(American cancer society).

SMOKING:FASHIONABLE VS BAD HEALTH 7

Even though smoking is known as fashionable. Being a smoker, it has a serious

outcome. Smoking is extremely bad for the smokers as well as the people staying around the

smokers. Smoking not just affect those who smoke in fact, it affects people around them too.

More recent research has linked ETS exposure to cervical and breast cancer, stroke, and

miscarriages in adults; and to asthma induction, decreased lung function, cystic fibrosis, and

cognition and behavior problems in children. ETS exposure causes approximately 112 deaths per

year in Newfoundland and Labrador and is the leading cause of workplace death (Newfoundland

and Labrador Medical Association).There are different places that people are exposed to

secondhand smoke is at work, public places, at home etc. No matter which places it is, in

compare to adult, its very danger for children where they get affected easily because they have

sensitive body. As a result, it damages their arteries with that harmful chemicals that they

inhales.

So in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg banned smoking in New York City’s bars and restaurants.

Then in 2011, he banned smoking in most outdoor areas like parks and beaches. After that

month, New York became the first large city to ban tobacco sales to people under the age of

21(Eliana Dockterman, 2013).

Smokers can harm in many ways. United States is overpopulated country where it

consists of people from various countries. Cigarette smoking is the number one cause of

preventable disease and death worldwide.(American lung association). Smoking­ related diseases

SMOKING:FASHIONABLE VS BAD HEALTH 8

claim over 393,000 American lives each year. Smoking cost the US over $193 billion in 2004,

including $97 billion in lost productivity and $96 billion in direct healthcare expenditures.

In US, there is almost 18.1% of people smokes cigarette. So, there is no way that people

won’t get affected. Each year in United States alone, it is responsible for an estimated 42,000

deaths from heart disease in people who are current non­smokers, about 3,400 lung cancer in

non­smoking adults, worse asthma and asthma related problems in up to 1 million asthmatic

children, between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections(lungs and bronchus) in

children under 18 months of age with 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations each year and making

children much more likely to be put into intensive care when they have the flu; they stay in the

hospital longer (American Cancer Society, 2012).

For this research paper, I interviewed one of my doctor. According to Dr.Rumana

Rahman, she said smoking is a bad health where it really affects your body. She mentioned that

the one puff of smoke, as you inhale that smoke you are inhaling a lot of chemicals which spread

throughout the lungs. But it does not just affect your lungs, it's affecting your heart to beat faster,

your blood pressure to go up. In Fact, it affect every single organs in the body. Smoking even

causes a bladder cancer. She also said that smoking just don’t affect the inside, it also affect the

outside. Smoking deprives the skin of the oxygen and nutrients by affecting blood vessels and

those chemicals that you alluded to, they triggers the destruction to what we need in our skin to

be healthy, collagen, fibers to give your skin youthful look to it. She said she also noticed

smokers appearance where she sees a lot of wrinkle around their face.

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All in all, smoking is extremely bad habit. No matter people view it as fashionable or

whatever. It will really have a serious outcome which lead people being in a serious condition.

Smoking will affect not quickly as they smoke but later as the time goes by. In fact, each year

more people die prematurely from smoking than die from automobile accidents, drug abuse,

AIDS, and alcohol combined(USDHS, 1989).

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Work cited:

American Cancer Society. (2012). Cancer Facts and Figures. Atlanta,Ga

David Gray, Amanda Amos and Candace Currie (1996), Exploring young people’s perception of

smoking images in youth magazines, Health education research. Vol.11 No.2 p215­230

Dr. Rumana Rahman (March 30, 2015). Personal interview

Goddard E (1990) Why children start smoking. HMSO, London

Hasting G., et al. (1994) Cigarette advertising and children's smoking: British Medical Journal,

933­936.

Janice Breen Burns (2011, June 25). Despite warning and health modelling, it appears smoking

is still the fashion.

National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute (1996, May). Cancer Rates and Risks, 4th

edition.

US Department of Health and Human Services (2014). The Health Consequences of Smoking­50

years of progress: A Report of Surgeon General. Washington, DC, 1989

World Health Organization. (2009), Bollywood Making Smoking Fashionable.