Cigarettes are the single biggest cause of premature death on the planet. They have been described as a “delivery system for toxic chemicals and carcinogens” and are a direct cause of heart attacks, strokes, lung disease, different forms of cancer, plus many other serious illnesses. It has been estimated that each cigarette smoked takes 11 minutes off the smoker’s lifespan. The world’s present epidemic of lung cancer is almost entirely due to the use of low pH flue-cured tobacco in cigarettes, an industry-wide practice that could be reversed at any time. Cigarettes kill about 6 million people every year, a number that will grow before it shrinks. Smoking in the twentieth century killed only 100 million people, whereas a billion could perish in our century unless we reverse the course. Even if present rates of consumption drop steadily to zero by 2100, we will still have about 300 million tobacco deaths this century. The cigarette is the deadliest artefact in the history of human civilization. Many different methods have been proposed to steepen the downward slope of smoking including increased taxation, bans on advertising, promotion of cessation, and expansion of smoke-free spaces.
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There are already precedents who have adhered to it. Apart from reducing human suffering, abolishing the sale of cigarettes would result in savings in the realm of healthcare costs, increased labour productivity, lessened harms from fires, reduced consumption of scarce physical resources, and a smaller global carbon footprint. Abolition would also put a halt to global warming. Also, lately we have seen a trend of flavored cigarettes, especially menthol ones. Menthol adds to the already injurious practice of smoking and it has been recognized for many years. In a 2013 review of the science, the FDA concluded it is “likely that menthol cigarettes pose a public health risk above that seen with non -menthol cigarettes. ”By seeming to cool the throat and soothe the irritation from burning tobacco, menthol makes smoking more palatable. To top it off,trillions of cigarette butts are thrown into the environment every year, where they leach nicotine and heavy metals before turning into microplastic pollution. Therefore, it is high time that we pay more attention to the local or national bans on the scale of cigarettes in tandem with individual steps.
