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Kara Bonner

ENG Comp 2

Literature Review

Dr. Cassel

7 May 2021

Why Are People Addicted to Smoking and How to Treat Them?

Smoking habits has worsened over the years, adolescents and adults alike becoming

addicted to it. There has been a lot of research done to figure out why people are so dependent on

nicotine to function in their everyday lives. With this research, Doctors will be able to save lives

from addiction and prevent people from getting addicted. Smoking is bad for everyone’s health,

no matter who they are or what they are doing. There are different kinds of smoking, like

secondhand smoke that can harm other people who don’t smoke at all. Nicotine is a drug that is

addictive in many ways than one, some ways it is used to benefit people in a good way and in

some ways it’s not.

Being addicted to smoking can have its effects on people who have other underlying

health issues, and people may develop health issues caused by smoking. People may develop

health conditions such as heart disease and lung cancer when smoking. People who are addicted

to smoking will at one point want to quit smoking. Quitting smoking is not as easy as some

people may think it to be. With the proper help from the proper people, they will be able to quit

smoking successfully. Nicotine addiction is not something to mess around with especially for

people at a young age. Most of the time adolescents start smoking first at a young age.
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Smoking addiction is hard to deal with in people’s everyday lives, especially when they

start out smoking at a young age. Smoking at a young age can be very harmful to young people

who don’t understand the dangers of smoking. No one should be smoking at a young age, yet

people do it anyways and they suffer major consequences that could change their life forever.

Smoking doesn’t just have an effect on someone’s physical health, but their mental health too. A

person’s mental health is just as important as their physical health no matter what the problem

may be. Having a smoking addiction and a mental illness at the same time can be dangerous

because the amount of smoking doesn’t decrease in mentally ill people it goes up.

With Nicotine addiction comes the effects of it and they are difficult to deal with at any

age. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse “Cigarette smoking is the most popular

method of using tobacco” (NIDA, pg. 2). When smoking tobacco, people get different kinds of

sensations that vary between who is smoking at that time. One sensation that is most common to

get in smoking tobacco is a slight “kick” that gives someone a burst of energy. for example, the

kick “helps” people get motivated and get work done.

There are different ways that people choose to stop smoking or try to get help for their

addiction to smoking. One way people try and stop smoking is by going cold turkey, going cold

turkey is when someone all of the sudden stops smoking all in one sitting. This is a dangerous

way of quitting addiction because the withdraw people go through is very intense, but not as

intense as someone taking a hard drug. Also, when someone quits smoking all at once, and then

over time goes back to smoking the same number of cigarettes as they did once before, their
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body won’t be able to handle the amount of nicotine they are putting back into their body that

they got rid of once before.

Another way people quit smoking is by using patches or other prescribed medications.

When using the patches to help control their addiction, people have to make sure the patch has

the right dosage that their body can handle. If they do not get the correct dosage, they could get

very sick from using the patch. Some people will also go to rehab to help get rid of their

addiction no matter if it is Nicotine or not. Quitting smoking is better than being addicted to it or

any other substance because, it will not only affect that person’s life but others around them as

well.

Even though people have this bad habit of smoking it is a way they can relieve stress.

Smoking for some people may be some kind of coping mechanism, but for others it’s a bad habit

they learned growing up. Nicotine addiction is not something that people want to mess with, it’s

bad for their physical, mental, and emotional health overall. Overall, no one should be smoking.

If people lived in a perfect world, no one would, but people have the freedom to do what they

wish, they’ll just have to pay the consequences for their actions.
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Works Cited

Marron, Donncha. “Stop Smoking the Easyway : Addiction, Self-Help, and Tobacco

Cessation.” Contemporary Drug Problems, vol. 46, no. 2, June 2019, pp. 198–214. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1177/0091450919843344.

National Institute on Drug Abuse. "Tobacco Use Is Addictive and Harmful." Gateway Drugs, edited by

Noël Merino, Greenhaven Press, 2008. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale In Context: Opposing

Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010543215/OVIC?

u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=9aeba472. Accessed 20 Mar. 2021. Originally published as

"National Institute on Drug Abuse Research Report—Tobacco Addiction," 2006.

NIDA. 2020, June 9. What are the physical health consequences of tobacco use?. Retrieved from

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-nicotine-e-cigarettes/what-are-

physical-health-consequences-tobacco-use on 2021, March 21

Schelling, Thomas C. "Addictive drugs: the cigarette experience." Science, vol. 255, no. 5043,

1992, p. 430+. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/A11922197/OVIC?u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=1742cf0b.

Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

The American Cancer Society. “Why People Start Smoking and Why It’s Hard to Stop”. The

American Cancer Society Medical and Editorial Team. 12 Nov 2021. Web. 6 March.

2021. https://www.cancer.org/healthy/stay-away-from-tobacco/why-people-start-using-

tobacco.html#written_by