Smoking - a practice which harms our health

Tobacco smoking is a practice in which tobacco is burned and the smoke inhaled or tasted. Smoking is primarily practiced as a route of administration for nicotine through the lungs; it is a way of getting nicotine into your system rapidly.

Over one billion people globally smoke tobacco every day.

Smoking dates are coming since 7,000 years ago. The globalization of cigarette smoking originates from the European exploration and conquest of the Americas, where tobacco smoking was common. The Europeans quickly took it up, and it spread around the world rapidly

USA statistics - according to the American Heart Association, 23.1% of men (24.8 million) and 18.3% of women (21.1 million) are smokers. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) an estimated total of 443,000 deaths occur every year in the USA from cigarette smoking - almost 1 in every 5 deaths. That is more deaths than the combined total from HIV, illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides and murders.

UK statistics - according to the National Health Service, UK, about one quarter of the adult population of the UK smokes (20 million people). 25% of British men and 23% of British women smoke. Smoking is the biggest cause of illness and death in the UK, causing 114,000 smokers to die annually. About half of all British smokers eventually manage to stop.

Many countries have introduced legislation over the last three decades banning smoking in shops, restaurants, pubs and bars, public places, etc. Not that many decades ago movie theaters (cinemas) in England used to have smoking and non-smoking sections. A significant number of young people are not aware that smoking was common in commercial airplanes.

People's view of smoking has varied over time, from being a vulgar habit, a sophisticated pastime, to a deadly health hazard. Over the last three decades of the twentieth century, mainly in industrialized countries, smoking became increasingly viewed as an undesirable activity that is bad for the health - a practice that kills.

Hollywood smoking and their influence on our children

Hollywood is such a well known place by everybody in this world. You can see there almost every actor that you like and most of them are smoking actors.The number of Hollywood films showing on-screen smoking is back up to the levels of the 1950s, with nearly 80% of films rated for young audiences including scenes in which characters light up, according to researchers in California.

Why nearly half of all teenage smokers in the US try cigarettes can be linked to on-screen smoking, leading the researchers to call for an adult rating for all films that depict tobacco use. "The science is very solid. Smoking in the movies has a very substantial effect on the risk that kids will get addicted to nicotine," said Stanton Glantz, one of the researchers at the University of California San Francisco.

A sample of the top-grossing films over the last 50 years found that smoking decreased from an average of 10.7 events an hour in 1950 to 4.9 in 1982 - and then shot up to 10.9 by 2002. An "event" ranges from a character lighting a cigarette to a shot of a tobacco advertisement.When teens see smoking cigarettes on TV they believe this is right, but it is not.

A spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America told the San Jose Mercury that industry statistics showed that only about half of PG-13 movies over the past two years had featured tobacco use. "Everybody agrees that ... our industry shouldn't be encouraging or glamourising smoking," the spokeswoman said. But the study, published in December's issue of the journal Pediatrics, found that nearly four out of five PG-13 movies show somebody smoking cigarettes or cigars or chewing tobacco.