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Nicotine
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Nicotine is the drug found in tobacco leaves. Whether someone smokes, chews, or sniffs tobacco, the nicotine is delivering to their brain. One cigarette contains around 10 milligrams of nicotine. Nicotine causes the addiction that keeps people smoking despite its harmful effects. Because the smoker inhales only some of the smoke from a cigarette and not all of each puff is absorbed in the lungs, a smoker gets about 1 to 2 milligrams of the drug from each cigarette. In fact, a drop of pure nicotine would kill a person.
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[edit] Effects
[edit] Short Term
When a person smokes a cigarette, the body responds immediately to the chemical nicotine in the smoke. Nicotine causes a short-term increase in blood pressure, heart rate, and the flow of blood from the heart. It also causes the arteries to narrow. Carbon monoxide reduces the amount of oxygen the blood can carry. This, combined with the effects produced by nicotine, creates an imbalance in the demand for oxygen by the cells and the amount of oxygen the blood is able to supply. (American Heart Association and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
[edit] Long Term
It is now well documented that smoking can cause chronic lung disease, coronary heart disease, and stroke, as well as cancer of the lungs, larynx, esophagus, mouth, and bladder. In addition, smoking is known to contribute to cancer of the cervix, pancreas, and kidneys. Researchers have identified more than 40 chemicals in tobacco smoke that cause cancer in humans and animals. Smokeless tobacco and cigars also have deadly consequences, including lung, larynx, esophageal, and oral cancer. The harmful effects of smoking do not end with the smoker. Women who use tobacco during pregnancy are more likely to have adverse birth outcomes, including babies with low birth weight, which is linked with an increased risk of infant death and with a variety of infant health disorders. The health of nonsmokers is adversely affected by environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Each year, exposure to ETS causes an estimated 3,000 non-smoking Americans to die of lung cancer and causes up to 300,000 children to suffer from lower respiratory-tract infections. Evidence also indicates that exposure to ETS increases the risk of coronary heart disease. (American Heart Association and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
[edit] Birth Defects
- Miscarriage or stillbirth
- Low birth weight
- Premature birth
None of these are 100% likely to happen, but there is a much higher risk of these occuring if the mother smokes regularly during pregnancy. Smoking slows the growth of the fetus, which is the cause of a low birth weight.
[edit] Effects on Teeth and Gums
[edit] Tooth Decay (Caries)
Nineteenth century dental surgeons presumed that tobacco smoking protected against caries and as late as 1968 Schmidt felt able to state that caries reduction was the only advantage of smoking. Most recent investigators, however, have concluded that cigarette smoking is most certainly associated with an increased caries rate but that a cause-and-effect relationship is still not proven. Smokers have a significantly greater number of carious or repaired tooth surfaces than nonsmokers, and heavy smokers are more affected than light smokers. Smokers also have higher plaque rates than nonsmokers. It has been suggested that smokers as a group have poorer oral hygiene habits and skills, make fewer visits to dentists, and have lesser overall health standards than nonsmokers. As this has not been adequately controlled for in past investigations it may be the real reason for the increased caries rate.
More than one-fifth of the content of some brands of smokeless tobacco is sugar and a few brands are even capable of serving as growth media for several bacteria implicated in the production of caries. Smokeless tobacco users, moreover, have significantly greater numbers of caries-associated bacteria at the site of quid placement when compared to nonusers. The caries that results from smokeless tobacco use is frequently cervical or root caries, but regardless of the caries type carious destruction is seen far more frequently in smokeless tobacco users who also have gingivitis. While the evidence would appear to conclusively associate smokeless tobacco use with dental caries, a cause-and-effect relationship is not conclusively established and several well-designed contemporary investigations have found little or no correlation. (Maxillofacial Center)
[edit] Abrasion
Tooth abrasion resulting in a notching of incisal edges and cusp tips is a well-established consequence of holding a pipe in the same location while smoking. But long-term smokeless tobacco users also demonstrate excessive and frequently generalized wear of occlusal and incisal surfaces, especially in persons employed in dusty environments, such as coal mines and textile mills (Figure 10). This abrasion, produced by sand and other gritty materials remaining in processed tobacco, usually takes many years to develop, but the present authors have seen severe abrasion after only four years of smokeless tobacco use. (Maxillofacial Center)
[edit] Erosion
The chemical dissolution of enamel has occasionally been reported in tobacco smokers and chewers, but only as a secondary consequence of using breath mints or as idiopathic cases. Erosion does not seem to be a serious problem and, in fact, chewers may be somewhat protected by the natural alkalinity of smokeless tobacco. (Maxillofacial Center)
[edit] Gingivitis
Frequent studies have concluded that tobacco smokers are more likely to demonstrate gingival redness, hemorrhage and inflammatory enlargement (edema) than nonsmokers with similar oral hygiene habits. Others, however, have found no increased gingival bleeding in smokers, possibly because of the vasoconstriction produced by nicotine. Smokeless tobacco users likewise have no more gingivitis than nonusers, but this habit is well known to produce a characteristic painless loss of gingival tissues in the area of tobacco contact. This gingival "recession" frequently includes bony destruction but is seldom associated with the inflammatory changes noted clinically in routine gingivitis (Figure 9). It may result from a combination of factors, including abrasion and the local tobacco-induced release of collagenase and other protein-destroying enzymes.
Logic would seem to indicate that tobacco use must have some effect on the gingival and periodontal structures. Tobacco contains, after all, several cytotoxic substances which have been shown to be secreted in salivary and gingival crevicular fluids. Smokers also have markedly more calculus than nonsmokers, and heavy smokers have more calculus than light smokers. Nicotine's well-known vasoconstriction effects have been shown to be strong in periodontal tissues, even in the face of elevated blood pressures, and gingival circulation has been shown to decrease by as much as 70% during the smoking of a cigarette. Tobacco smoking, furthermore, also suppresses human immune responses, including responses to oral microbial toxins. Oral leukocytes, especially neutrophils, have a diminished ability to move, to phagocytize, or to secrete enzymes in smokers. (Maxillofacial Center)
[edit] Secondhand Smoke
Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. It is involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers, lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished and can cause or exacerbate a wide range of adverse health effects, including cancer, respiratory infections, and asthma. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stated that second hand smoke can cause cancer. (lungusa.org)
Secondhand smoke contains at least 250 chemicals known to be toxic, including more than 50 that can cause cancer.
Exposure to nicotine and secondhand smoke is measured by testing the saliva, urine, or blood for the presence of a chemical called cotinine. Cotinine is a byproduct of nicotine metabolization, and tobacco is the only source of this marker.
[edit] Products Containing Nicotine
- Cigarettes
- Cigars
- Pipe Tobacco
- Chewing Tobacco
- Snuff
- Nicotine Patches
- Gums
- Inhalers
- Nasal Sprays
[edit] U.S. Federal Legal Summary
Tobacco products, containing nicotine, are not regulated. They are sold over the counter, but there is an age restriction. In 46 of the 50 states, the age is 18, but in certain states, the age to buy nicotine products is 19. Nicotine is also an unscheduled drug.
It is not federally illegal for those under 18 years old (19 in 4 states) to purchase or possess tobacco; only for stores to sell to them. Some individual states have enacted legislation making possession by minors against the law.
Since Article One of the Constitution of the United States does not grant the United States Congress the power to enact a smoking ban under federal law, therefore under the Tenth Amendment it is one of the powers "reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people." Thus, smoking bans must come from the state level. Certain states only ban smoking in bars, only in resturaunts, or only in non-hospitality workplaces, while others ban all three or only two. In the end, it really comes down the state's legislation. Some states still have no regulation on where smoking can occur.