Smoking
The use of tobacco is the largest preventable cause of death and diseases in the United States. Each year it is recorded that 480,000 people die from cigarette smoking. About 41,000 of those deaths are from second-hand smoke. 36.5 million adults in the US smoke that was estimated in 2015 ("Burden of Tobacco Use..."). Smoking Tobacco has been around for awhile but became popular in 1865, after the Civil War, and many people have developed serious health problems which continue today.
The first use of tobacco was medicine. It was also used to prevent hunger and thirst in the 15th century ("Smoking and Health"). Tobacco was a primary crop in Southern North America. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe were presidents who grew tobacco. At this time of their presidency tobacco was main chewed or smoked as a cigar (Sprague and Nancy).
In the
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The consumption of cigarettes reached a peak in the United States by 1963. When it reached the peak, filter tips or devices on the end of a cigarette used to allow the smoker to consume less smoke, accounted for half of the cigarettes sold. Since the 1950's the largest cash crop in the US, tobacco, has been decreasing. In 2012 the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that about 18.1 percent of adults in America were smokers (Sprague and Nancy).
Second-hand smoke is smoke from burning tobacco products ("Secondhand Smoke (SHS) Facts"). This is another cause of deaths in America. About 60,000 Americans lose their lives each year from the effects of secondhand smoke. These effect can include heart diseases, lung cancer, bronchitis and sudden infant death syndrome. When exposed to secondhand smoke many people suffer from irritations from the strong irritants ("Researchers to