CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Smoking can be referred to as the inhaling or taking of smoke resulting from tobacco. Tobacco is a naturally occurring plant found mostly in the tropics and presently grown in most utilized part of the world as an agricultural product. Tobacco leaves is the most utilized part of the plant and it could be used naturally (fresh) or processed (dry) systematically into other form of products as it is being seen today e.g. cigarette, snuff pipes etc.
According to the Oxford concise medical dictionary, tobacco is the dried leaves of the plant niceties bacum or related species used in smoking and as snuff. The origin of inhaling smoke can be traced back of about 3000 B. C to the burning of these dried leaves and incense in magical ceremonial and religious practices among the Egyptians and the Maya India in South Africa until the spread of tobacco smoking in the fifteenth century after Spanish explorer had been introduced to it by the Mexican and Caribbean India taking in of smoke and fumes and remained primarily only a priestly and occasionally a medical function. After the introduction of smoking of Europe, Asia and Africa the use of tobacco among ordinary people started from an alarming novelty to a common people habit.
Tobacco smoke contain poisonous substance such as nicotine, alkaline, carbon monoxide, aerolein, ammonia prussic acid and a number of aldehydes and tars in all tobacco contain some 4, 000 chemicals. Cigarette smoking is also found to be an important cause of cancer of the esophagus, nasopharynx, mouth, larynx, kidney and bladder as well as cause of the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema and heart diseases, stroke and other cardio vascular risk associated with oral conceptive use and exposure occupational hazards.
There have been numerous campaign against cigarette smoking communicating that this voice causes death, but a threat to health doesn’t seem to be a good reason for quitting anything people somehow block themselves and ignore all the information that is given to them. Cigarette smoking penneates everything around it. Smokers usually have smelling hair, breath clothes and if they smoke indoors a smell room, the strench of cigarette smoke is very penetrating and hard to remove even if the person quits smoking the odor remains for a long time.
Cigarette smoking also stains the teeth yellow or some times even brown, since this effect in long term most people are not aware of it when they begins smoking the truth is that a cigarette stain is very hard to eliminate from the teeth and it will probably end up costing a considerable amount of money. Yellow teeth are disgusting because they give an unhygienic image and make people look older. Smoking reduced the rate of lung growth, smoking limits young people physical fitness in terms of both performance and endurance even among young people trained in competitive running.