Cigarette Smoking and Lung Cancer

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Cigarette smoking has become a part of the daily life of many Americans. At every given second, someone somewhere is smoking a cigarette. Beginning in the early 20th century, institutions have been investigating the negative, and in some cases fatal, effects smoking tobacco products has on the body. Banning cigarette commercials from television and mandating warning labels on all sold tobacco products have not been enough to keep hundreds of thousands of people dying each year from the long term effects of tobacco. This country has taken a focus to begin to legalize marijuana; however, the focus should change to this negative element of our economy. Cigarettes should be illegal in the United States for its extensive damage to the body and it’s near guaranteed cause of death. In 1919, there was the first discovery of lung cancer. Dr. George Dock asked his students to come and observe the autopsy of a man with the first sight of what we now know of as a cancerous lung. One of the students who witnessed the autopsy later saw nine soldiers with the same cancerous lungs who had all been heavy smokers during World War I. This was the first connection doctors made between the smoking of tobacco and lung cancer (Meyer 72). Tobacco became a hot commodity once soldiers brought it back from war; however, the discoveries of the health effects of smoking tobacco increased right along with it. In 1939, more research had been performed and it was now scientifically proven that smoking tobacco lead to higher instance of cancer and heart disease. It was not until the late 1950s when the sale of cigarettes became illegal to minors. In the next decade, the Cigarette Smoking Act was placed in full effect (Meyer 72). It was at this point where ever... ... middle of paper ... ...his funding from the government and was sentenced 270 years in federal prison for “falsely curing” his patients. All of this is centered on money. The government receives luxury tax on cigarettes and hospitals receive billions of dollars because of the copious patients that are not forced into the hospital to receive radiation treatments and chemotherapy. Each person who is diagnosed with cancer is suddenly worth a minimum of $300,000 to the cancer industry. If the government eliminates tobacco, they are also eliminating one of the main causes of cancer, which would mean a loss of funds. The government’s focus should not be within monetary bounds. They should be more concerned with the estimated 159,260 Americans are expected to die from lung cancer in 2014. The past five years, the focus has been taken off of drugs like tobacco and has been placed on marijuana.

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