As the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports, the nicotine contained in tobacco is as addictive a drug as heroin. From tobacco use comes a host of physical, mental and financial consequences that far outweigh the pleasure gained from smoking or using chew tobacco.
The health problems arising from nicotine dependence and smoking represent a major source of premature death in the United States. In fact, the American Cancer Society projects that deadly lung cancer could be all but eliminated if people stopped smoking.
Addiction
When people repeatedly seek the pleasant feeling caused by nicotine's action on the brain, a tolerance builds, compelling them to want more. According to the Nemours Foundation, it may take just a few tries at tobacco use to create a dependence, which represents the first health problem that smokeless tobacco users and cigarette smokers face.
Nicotine addiction is a brain disease with mental and physical effects, similar to heroin. The habit is extremely difficult to break, especially for people who start smoking before age 21, the National Institute on Drug Abuse notes. In fact, only about 10 percent of all smokers ever stop smoking, putting them at risk for a wide range of diseases.
Health Problems
Chew tobacco is associated with gum disease and oral cancer. Cigarette smokers get sick more often than nonsmokers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report. Frequent respiratory infections may give way to chronic symptoms, such as a daily "smoker's cough" or more serious breathing obstructions, such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
Smoking raises the risk for blood clots and heart problems, including heart attack, aneurysm and stroke. Nicotine is just one of dozens of carcinogens that rolled and chewing tobacco use circulates throughout the body via the blood. Depending on the form of tobacco ingestion, cancer can strike the lip, mouth, lungs, throat, kidney, pancreas or bladder.
Financial Problems
The need for tobacco chewers and cigarette smokers to continually purchase tobacco products makes their habits costly. The American Lung Association estimates the price for one pack of cigarettes a day, for instance, at $5 to $10, as of 2010, equaling $1,825 to $3,650 annually.
Added to that is the sick time lost from work paychecks, more frequent medical expenses and prescription costs for managing chronic diseases. The Office of the Surgeon General tallied this combined expense nationwide at over $157 billion in 2004.
Death
Fifty percent of cigarette smokers pay the ultimate price by succumbing to a fatal smoking-related disease, the American Cancer Society reports. Nicotine use causes some illnesses and allows others to take hold by keeping smokers and chewers locked into their destructive habits. Except for gum disease, all of the health problems listed above are potentially fatal.
