While many people use it daily in one form or another, not many people realize or consider tobacco to be a drug. Tobacco is a drug and while it remains legal it is no less harmful than some of the illegal drugs that we have all been warned about as long as we can remember. Here is a quick breakdown on tobacco:

What is Tobacco?

Tobacco is a plant that is brown in color that grows in warmer climates. The leaves from the tobacco plant are dried out and then are processed for consumption.

How is Tobacco Used?

Tobacco can be consumed in several ways.

• Smoked either in a cigarette, cigar or pipe.
• Chewed or “dipped” which is when it is placed in the mouth and the nicotine is taken in via the gums.
• Snuffed which is when it is ground up into a powder and inhaled through the nose.

Regardless of how the tobacco is used, it is harmful. While each of the above mentioned have their own individual risks associated with them, they all have been shown to cause cancer and therefore one should not be considered more safe than another. All forms of tobacco will contain nicotine and therefore all forms of tobacco are also addictive, making it even harder to quit.

Tobacco Contains Poisons

When people think of tobacco and why it is harmful the first thing that comes to mind is normally nicotine. Nicotine is considered to be a toxin but is in no ways the most concerning of the ingredients found in tobacco. While many of the additives in tobacco are considered to be at safe levels in their own right, when they are burned their chemical composition changes making some of them more dangerous. Some of the ingredients in tobacco that some might find shocking are:

• Methane
• Hydrazine
• Carbon Monoxide
• Acetone
• Formaldehyde
• Ammonia
• Arsenic
• Hydrogen Cyanide

There are also some of the same poisons in chewing tobacco as well. While this is not burned, 43 of the chemicals in tobacco are shown to cause cancer. With those types of additives it is no wonder that tobacco caused deaths in the USA stand at approximately 440,000 and it is important to remember that these death are preventable.

Tobacco annually kills more people than AIDS, TB, car accidents, drugs, alchohol, malaria, suicide  and murder put together. It is also estimated that while tobacco only killed an estimated .3 million people in 1950, and 2.1 million in 2000 that by the time we hit the year 2025 an estimated 3 million people will die annually from tobacco related deaths. That is just considering industrialized countries and the numbers are even more staggering for the non-industrialized nations.

The bottom line is that tobacco in any form in any dose is harmful. While many people would not consider taking a loaded gun and putting it to their head and pulling the trigger, millions take the same chance everyday each time they use tobacco. While the effects and harm might not be immediate, it is none the less harmful.

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