The beginning of the beginning of cigarettes in the United States.
After Columbus arrived in the United States, tobacco was one of the things that reached from the United States to the rest of the world. It was considered an expensive hobby in the eighteenth century. Pipes and cigars were drunk by enthusiasts. The invention of placing it in the middle of paper and burning it was in the mid-nineteenth century. Thus its cheap use reached Italy, Spain, Brazil, Turkey. During the Crimean War to the Soviets. His habit spread like a virus from soldiers sitting in trenches dug in wars. After the wars, these soldiers brought this habit to the civilian population. From Europe to Asia and then back to its original place, the United States. Wars, especially World War II, played a major role in the spread of this habit throughout the world.
In 1870, per capita cigarette consumption in the United States was less than one cigarette per capita per year. In 1953, it reached 3,500 cigarettes per person per year, or ten cigarettes a day. Eleven cigarettes per person in the UK, twenty cigarettes per person per day in Scotland.
A UK statistician has alerted the Ministry of Health that the number of deaths from lung cancer has increased fifteenfold in 20 years. In February 1947, a conference was convened in London to consider the reasons for this. The reasons considered included pollution, fog, use of coal, X-rays, use of bitumen on the roads, colds, factories, car smoke. They did not have cigarettes.
Alan Hill was commissioned to investigate the cause.
In the United States, in 1948, Winder observed an autopsy of a patient who had died of lung cancer and observed that there was ink on the lungs, similar to cigarette butts. He expressed doubts that they were involved. The surgeon who performed the autopsy replied, "Tomorrow you will say that drinking milk causes cancer or wearing socks causes cancer."
But Winder was allowed to research his idea and funding was obtained from Graham in the Surgeon General's Office. Graham himself was a smoker but decided to work with Winder on it.
Wender published his paper in the British Medical Journal in September 1948 on the analysis of the answers to his first questionnaire, which was the first to show a link between smoking and cancer. Seeing this paper, Alan Hill also included cigarettes among the factors he was researching. His personal opinion was about the bitumen of the roads. But the connection with cigarettes soon became apparent. Analysis of doctors from 1951 to March 1954 made this connection very clear.
By the time Alan Hill's eye-opening results were published, smoking and romance were on the rise. The number of people smoking cigarettes in parties, hotels, colleges, markets was increasing all over the world. In the United States and Europe, the number of male smokers reached 50 percent. Among women, the figure was 36 percent.
One study after another testified to a link between lip, throat, respiratory tract and lung cancer and smoking. But cigarettes were a multi-billion dollar business. Tobacco growers, cigarette companies, sellers, these were all powerful groups, people's jobs were associated with it. People have been using it for hundreds of years. The campaign against it was met with fierce resistance from these groups. Various tactics were used. Science, politics and law ... Together, the three reined in this powerful lobby. This war was fought with all sorts of tricks. Cigarette butts were warned to be unhealthy. The last cigarette was advertised in the United States on January 1, 1971, at midnight. The number of smokers began to fall after 1974.
Old sins have long shadows. The rate of lung cancer began to decline after 1984 and had dropped by 30% by 2002.
Developing countries lag behind in this race. Officially, the discouragement of cigarettes began late. Smoking is on the rise in countries like Pakistan, India and China. Cigarettes are the cause of 125,000 deaths annually in Pakistan and 1 million deaths in India. It is increasing every year. Cigarette companies are doing lucrative business around the world. They have found ways to do their job. This tobacco-related cancer march is in full swing.
"The stories I see of the devastation in the cancer ward, which are directly related to cigarettes, are hard to tell. A well-dressed young man working in an advertising agency who started using cigarettes for comfort is having his jaw cut off to get rid of tongue cancer. A housewife who had adopted this habit to pass the time and saw that her children have also become smokers is suffering from the worst pain of respiratory cancer. A religious leader who is dying of lung cancer says it is the only sin in his life he could not stop.
And the power of denial and self-deception of many of these patients who are paying the heaviest price for their habit is astounding. Many of my patients do not give up this habit even during cancer treatment. While they are signing the chemotherapy permit form, I can smell tobacco in their clothes. "Even after the operation, many patients are begging for cigarettes from the nurses in the corridor like a helpless zombie."
The business is booming despite evidence of all the harmful effects of cigarettes. After being at the same level for many years around the world, the number of smokers in the world is now starting to increase again. Campaigns against smoking have not been successful in gaining public attention. Surprisingly, the possibility of getting cancer due to something is also frightening. But there is no other thing we know that is more powerful and common carcinogen than the one we know to cause cancer. It is being sold in markets all over the world for a few rupees.
Vehara Ambakar.
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