Underage Smoking And Its Impact On Society

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As the world modernizes and social trends change with time, there are emerging social issues that continue to plague the society. These societal issues/ problems have impacted the society negatively leading to the affected people failing to become productive members of the society. Some of these issues include underage drinking, obesity, smoking, drug abuse and religious radicalization. This paper will evaluate obesity, underage drinking and smoking and how these problems have impacted on the society and the affected societal members with an emphasis on teenagers and young adults. Recent studies have found out that the age when a kid starts drinking has continued to drop to the current 11 years for teenage boys and 13 years for girls, with almost 90% continuing with the behavior into adulthood. Reasons for the increase in underage drinking has been blamed on negative media, cheap alcoholic drinks, a rise in private parties, availability and easy access for drinks and family influence.
Obesity has also been on the increase due to over reliance on junk food and bad health lifestyle. This has led to various complications such as loss of employment opportunities to fields that require fit persons, and medical conditions such as heart complications and high blood pressure.

The other social issue that continues to destabilize the societal structure is smoking usually fueled by negative media messages, peer influence, family influence and availability of this killer drug. This has resulted in antisocial behavior, and health complications such as lung diseases and amputations resulting from tar induced conditions.
Underage Drinking
Despite widespread efforts to reduce underage drinking, the behavior has continued to spread and has bec...

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...e, cool and macho lifestyle. This drives many young people into smoking. The family structure also plays a huge role for children from a smoking family are more likely to adopt the habit from an early age and continue with it to old age. As the first introductory drug, many teens start using this drug at a tender age influencing their peers into this negative practice. Cigarettes are also easily accessible without limitations of age and present in most family stories (Surgeon General, 2012).
The major impact of smoking to the society has been increasing smoke related illnesses such as cancer, blood flow problems to the joints and other lung related disease. It also reduces a person’s reproductive health with women smokers a third less likely to get pregnant. Women smokers also may kill their unborn children or give birth to deformed children (Hindmarch, 2008).

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