Smoking a child's future
Smoking a child's future
Smoking has been an obsession with most of us with such grave consequences as can hardly be imagined. Smoking is known to be detrimental to the social, mental and physical well-being of smokers as well as all those associated with the smoker. This is also called involuntary or secondhand smoking. Smoking a cigarette or a cigar could be as detrimental to someone's health as to a non-smoker. Passive smoking is known to have detrimental effects as respiratory disorders, pulmonary disorders, and even stomach ailments. The smoke exhaled or inhaled by a smoker contains more than 400 substances that have harmful effects on the user as well as those in contact with smokers. Smoke from cigarettes is believed to have carcinogenic effects on the individual in particular, and the society as a whole. Some of the carcinogens active for passive smokers could be enumerated as benzene; 1, 3-butadiene; benzo[a]pyrene; 4-(methyinitrosamino)-1-(pyridyl)-1-butanone.
All these chemicals could prove to be detrimental to the health of adults as well as children because people of all ages come in contact with a smoker's smoke in one form or the other. It is known to be equally harmful for toddlers, infants, teenagers and even adolescents. Everyone inhales cigarette smoke in one form or the other. It makes a very little difference if one opens the windows of the room for ventilation for smoke to find its way out. An adequate quantity of smoke always remains in the room to harm family members including children. Children from households that have smokers are more likely to fall ill than children from households that don't have smokers. Passive smoking, in a way, affects the development of children besides their school attendance in schools in developed, developing and underdeveloped countries. Everyone falls prey to the demon of passive smoking regardless of his or her age, gender or class. Society is affected in a lot of ways by smokers.
Smoking by pregnant and nursing mothers could prove to be detrimental to the babies. In all cases of studies conducted, the offspring is found to be lighter and shorter than the ones who have parents who don't smoke. Incidents of placental abortion, prenatal mortality and premature labour are found to be more in case of mothers who smoke. Smoking of the mother may also cause congenital damage to the respiratory system of infants. Smoking parents are known to have children with reduced potency of the immune system.
Children are the most likely to suffer from the harms inflicted by the dragon of passive smoking, to say nothing of the effects of active smoking. They are at a developing stage of their lives, it is their proper development that should be the main concern of those posing to be guardians of the society.
Smoking before children presents an ideal culture where smoking is glorified. This way, children are more likely to take up smoking themselves. This could take the form of showing actors and actresses smoking in theatres or movies. Children look upon these protagonists as role models and fall prey to smoking themselves. This could explain the government's efforts at prohibiting the display of smoking and smokers in the media. The media attracts the innocent and vulnerable minds of children with a more potent force than the adults exposed to these shows. While the media aims at the presentation of a symbolic message through all its paraphernalia, the media intends to convey a negative image of the protagonists shown to be smoking, but in their innocence, children take the message at its face value. They absorb the message as it is shown.
Children fail to see the negative aspects associated with the glorification associated with the media and what the protagonists are shown to be doing. This brings about the need to initiate the change within the self if we want to bring about a change in the society. change can never be abrupt and subtle, it has to be gradual and slow. This would involve an accurate measurement of the extent of passive smoking one indulges in.
Incidents of pneumonia and bronchitis in children were found to be higher in cases where parents smoked cigarettes regularly. These effects of smoking are not related to birth weight or the soci-economic class of the parents. The only factor that pointed towards the situation was the smoking habit of the parents.
Measurement of the extent of passive smoking an individual has been exposed to is possible by measuring the levels of nicotine and cotinine in the body. Cotinine is held as a more reliable marker as compared to nicotine as it has a relatively longer half-life as compared to nicotine. The levels could be measured quite conveniently in blood, urine or saliva.
The problem could assume graver consequences if one is continuously and regularly exposed to the smoke of cigarettes. Passive smokers are four times more likely to contract heart and lung ailments as compared to those who are not exposed to cigarette smoke. Active smoking is even more frightening and has even more devastating effects on the health of smokers. There are several governmental and non-governmental organisations offering their services and counseling to smokers who wish to quit smoking.
The campaign should assume global merits and a global recognition because it proposes to bring about a change in the whole world. The campaign is supposed to bring about a revolution for children. It is expected to ameliorate the plight of children afflicted by smokers. These children don't smoke themselves, but they are the victims of passive smoking.
Smoking a child's future
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