Другое : Essay on the article Tobacco and Tolerance: Blowing smoke (о вреде курения)
Essay on the article Tobacco and Tolerance: Blowing smoke (о вреде курения)
Международный институт экономики и финансов,1 курс, Высшая Школа Экономики. on the article “Tobacco and Tolerance: Blowing smoke”. Not only labour made man differ from a monkey, but also care and
attention to his fellow creatures. This is the main point of human
relations and the basis of human being. Animals are first of all
competitors with each other, and they do not have an instinct to help their
neighbours and to think about their safety. The only exception is their own
cubs. Similarly, as a father and mother take care of a small child who does
not yet have his own opinion on what is good and what is bad, who do not
even know, that many seemingly innocent things harm his health greatly and
cause strong addiction. Even when a child realises that, it is very hard
for him to make the right decision. And if we consider such thing as
smoking, the only right decision is not to start it. One may argue that
whether to smoke or not is the private decision of every person and no one
might impose his point of view to someone. I agree with this statement, but
not always this principle provides us with a solution to the problem of
social wellbeing. People make a lot of decisions connected with great risks
like motorcycle riding, parachute jumping, smoking, taking drugs and so on.
Some of these things have unalterable consequences, which make people
regret they have made these decisions during the rest of their lives. The
only thing they should ask themselves is whether this thing is worth
risking. The fewer would be the number of activities that greatly harm
human health, and above all, of these, which are not worth risking like
smoking, the better it would be for the health of all humanity. The
exceptions are such things as scuba diving or mountain climbing and other,
because they can be justified from many reasons and they are not simple and
stupid self-poisoning. I do not agree with the author of the article
“Tobacco and Tolerance: Blowing smoke” that smoking is not a social problem
but a private one and the anti-smoking program should be minimized. Those
people, who have already started and have become addicted to ‘the grayish-
blue fumes’ can’t fully realize, why do they take this great risk, still
acknowledging that this harms their health, and it is hard for them to give
up smoking without outside help. For this noble purpose there should always
exist those people who can clearly realize this enormous threat as third
persons with their unaddicted minds. They should never stop such hard and
unappreciated occupations as different anti-smoke programs and, whether
smokers want it or not, they should try to pull them out of this ‘gray and
poisonous swamp’. This can be done by different government merciless
limitations of tobacco producing companies, tobacco advertisements,
restricting places for smoking to minimum and so on. That is why smoking is
a problem of the whole society, despite some of its members think that it
is not, because healthy persons form a healthy society. Smoking causes (or, if someone would be lucky, it might cause) many
different illnesses like lung and mouth cancer, heart disease, oral cavity.
In general, the risk of developing a tobacco-related cancer depends on the
intensity of the habit as determined by a duration of the smoking habit, a
number of cigarettes smoked per day, a tar content of the cigarette, and
the depth of inhalation. Cigarette smoking is not only related to the
development of lung cancer but also affects the development of cancer of
the bladder, oral cavity, and esophagus. A non-smoker’s inhalation of smoke
produced by smokers in an enclosed space also appears to heighten the risk
of developing lung cancer. That is why the problem of passive smoking is
also very actual and to avoid harmful consequences, governments of all
countries ought to enlarge the development of a program of making isolated
places for smokers to enjoy their dangerous toys without any harm to other
people. After the major medical revelations about smoking during the 1950s and
'60s there was an increasing attempt to lessen the influence of tobacco
advertising in several countries. Cigarette manufacturers in Canada agreed
to end television advertising in 1972 after a bill to effect that end was
passed in the Commons. In West Germany television advertising of cigarettes
was to be phased out by the end of 1972.And as a result, the rate of
smoking in America has declined from more than 40% to about 25% and the
number of ex-smokers has trebled. This was the great victory of anti-
smoking programs. In fact, a tobacco-producing industry is very profitable, and of course,
these companies try to find or sometimes to invent some evidences and
reasons why people need to use their harmful production. I believe that the
anti-smoking programs cause great losses to them, and someday they will
succeed and it would not be profitable for producers to continue operating
any more. Figure 1 shows that the demand curve for tobacco production is very
inelastic, because it is highly addictive and has no close substitutes.
Buyers could not reject a considerable amount of it in response to a large
increase in price. In figure 2 we see the situation after the government’s imposition of a
sales tax. The new Supply curve will shift upwards on the amount of tax.
And because t |
