Cigarette Smoking – An Age Old Dirty Habit
It is estimated that people have been smoking tobacco since as early as 5000BC. Back then, it was part of religious rituals and was burned as incense, which was then inhaled. In the 1500's people began smoking it in a form similar to a modern day, hand rolled cigarette. Even back then, cigarette smoking was met with sharp criticism, but it became popular anyway. In the 1920's, the first link between smoking and cancer was made, and subsequent research has taught us even more of the dangers of smoking tobacco. Despite that it is still estimated that over 1 billion people are cigarette smokers today. The first people to grow and smoke tobacco were in South America sometime between 3000 and 5000BC. It was often used by the native Americans of both South and North America in shamanistic rituals as a form of incense. Later, North American tribes would carry large pouches of it as a trade item and smoke it from a pipe. At that point, it was believed to be a gift from the creator and was smoked, even by children, to mark and celebrate important and special occasions in life as well as to seal important deals. Smoking was also believed to have medicinal properties and was ironically believed to be a good way of combating asthma and tuberculosis. It was not until the 1600's that settlers in America began growing tobacco as a cash crop. From that point, tobacco grew in popularity even while it came under harsh and frequent criticism for the health, social and moral implications that it posed. The sultan of the Ottoman Empire was the first to attempt a smoking ban, and since then many different leaders of many different countries and cultures have attempted to eradicate the habit. The interesting thing to note is that these bans predated any information about the dangers of smoking to the smoker and to others through second hand smoke. Today, the number of smokers has declined significantly since its heyday in the 1960's. More and more people are aware of the health concerns related to smoking. Public awareness campaigns have brought to light that cigarette smoking is the number one cause of death and illness in the United States. State, local and even federal government has begun to take measures to make smoking in public less and less common of a practice. More and more programs to help people quit smoking have also surfaced and there is more education in schools to educate children about the dangers of smoking, in the hopes of discouraging youngsters from starting this deadly habit.
|
