Who Should We Hold Responsible for Tobacco Related Illnesses and Deaths?

According to National Institute on Drug Abuse, the toll of deaths from tobacco use has mounted to a grand total of approximately 12,000,000 from the time the Surgeon General's findings of its dangers were released to the public in 1964 until the year 2004 (NIDA InfoFacts). Tobacco use is considered to be a leading cause of death and disability throughout the world according to National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIDA Researchers Complete Unprecedented Scan of Human Genome That May Help Unlock the Genetic Contribution to Tobacco Addiction. The study also indicates that each year in the US alone, over 440,000 people die of tobacco-related illnesses and those numbers mount to a whopping 5 million deaths worldwide. Estimates suggest that number will rise to 10 million annually within the next 30 years. I believe it's about time we hold the governments responsible for this atrocity. If governments outlawed tobacco, it wouldn't be as dangerous since there wouldn't be nearly as many users. So if we are talking about legalities, we are of course talking of the law makers, the governments.

Tobacco Statistics

According to the New York State Smokers' Quitline, "Tobacco kills more Americans each year than alcohol, cocaine, crack, heroin, homicide, suicide, car accidents, fire and AIDS combined" (Tobacco Trivia). They also point out that tobacco is the only legal consumer product that is deadly when used as intended. According to the National Alliance for Tobacco Cessation and the Surgeon General, 20% or one in five deaths are tobacco related. That's more than 1,200 people every day as shown in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report Health Consequences of Smoking: what it means to you, or as New York State Smokers' Quitline puts it, "Every ten seconds, somewhere in the world, someone dies of tobacco-related causes" (Tobacco Trivia).

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Surgeon General's Report Highlights: Four Major Conclusions of the 2004 Report, "Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body". The report further highlights diseases caused by smoking to include: abdominal aortic aneurysm, acute myeloid leukemia, cataract, pneumonia, periodontitis, chronic lung diseases, coronary heart and cardiovascular diseases, as well as reproductive effects and sudden infant death syndrome. The surgeon general says this is in addition to cervical, kidney, pancreas, stomach, bladder, esophageal, laryngeal, lung, oral, and throat cancers. Make no mistake about it, it's not a matter of if a tobacco user will become terminally ill, it's a matter of when.

The Individual's Responsibility

Hearing about the effects of tobacco use everywhere in today's society, it is virtually impossible for a person to say they don't know how dangerous it is to their health. Yet people continue to use the products in spite of this. At first glance, one might think the individuals choosing to use tobacco products should be held accountable for their own health and choices. If we dig a little deeper though, we find it might not be a personal choice to continue the use of something which will inevitability lead to a sickly and untimely death.

The drug nicotine found in tobacco is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream when a tobacco product is used and it immediately stimulates the release of epinephrine (adrenaline) as explained by National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA InfoFacts: Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products). Like cocaine and heroin, nicotine increases the levels of dopamine; this affects the control reward and pleasure in the brain. "For many tobacco users, long-term brain changes induced by continued nicotine exposure result in addiction--a condition of compulsive drug seeking and use, even in the face of negative consequences" (NIDA InfoFacts: Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products). Recent studies also indicate the possibility that additional compounds in tobacco smoke, such as acetaldehyde, may enhance the effect nicotine has on the brain.

The one thing that has a tobacco user thinking or believing they enjoy tobacco (enough to harm themselves to the point of death), and thus choose tobacco use over their good health, is the addiction to the drug nicotine. In fact, 70% of all smokers say they want to quit and 40% try each year as noted by National Alliance for Tobacco Cessation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (What it Means to You) (Fast Facts). We can reason that people should consider this before they make the decision to start, however, it should be noted that the majority of new addicts (an estimated 60%) are younger than 14 years of age. In fact New York State Smokers' Quitline, says each day in the US alone, almost 4,000 young people between the ages of 12 and 17 smoke their first cigarette and about 1,000 of those become daily (addicted) smokers (Ten Things You Didn't Know about Smoking). That's 52,000 minors becoming addicted to a deadly substance each year and the Bellum shows the numbers 80% - 90% of all smokers are addicted before they are old enough to purchase the tobacco (Mind over Matter: Nicotine, NIDA For Teens).

Can we honestly say that a 14 year old heroin addict "made their choice" and it is solely their fault and responsibility? No. The same principle applies with tobacco and other drugs, legal or not. Adolescents are too young to make such lifelong choices. The National Institute on Drug Abuse tells us that the part of the brain which enables us to make sound decisions and keep our desires under control is the prefrontal cortex which is still maturing during adolescent years (Drug Abuse and Addiction). This puts them at a higher risk for poor decisions. From the same page, "Brain imaging studies from drug-addicted individuals show physical changes in areas of the brain that are critical to judgment, decision making, learning and memory, and behavior control." Given this scientific evidence, we can see that even a mature adult brain on nicotine is unable to make sound choices, including not quitting tobacco use when they know of the deadly effects.

Now that addiction is a little more understood, we can see how it isn't reasonable to hold the addicted (particularly children) responsible for continued use.

The Tobacco Companies Responsibility

Tobacco companies continue to market a drug they now know to be addictive and draw in as much as nine times more adolescents than mature adults. Furthermore, tobacco's destruction to the body has been well known by the industry since the sixties and yet killing their customers hasn't stopped. As if that wasn't enough, these companies now add more chemicals to their