Blog #4: Smoking Addiction

So I’m writing this week’s blog particularly early (at least by my standard) because I’ll be unable to type the rest of the week after my surgery tomorrow. The truth is I’m amputating my right arm because I’ve secretly been an apotemnophiliac all this time. KIDDING. Please don’t take me seriously, also don’t be offended by my truly harmless joke. But I am seriously getting surgery tomorrow, removing a pretty big cyst in my right wrist that will prevent me from hand use for a little while. So anyways, here it goes: my take on smoking (nicotine and tobacco) addiction and how the portrayal of this act has changed significantly over time.

As Robin so selfishly (kidding, kind of) took one of my favorite TV shows (Breaking Bad) to analyze Heroin addiction, I decided to turn to one of my favorite movies instead. It might seem strange for an eleven year old to be addicted -- maybe I should be writing about myself instead -- to the movie Titanic, but eleven years later it’s still my favorite movie and I can pretty much quote the whole thing. Back to the point, the actual sinking of the Titanic took place in 1912, a time in which smoking cigarettes was as commonplace as eating. I don’t have the time tonight to watch the movie to report exact numbers, but I know how often cigarette smoking occurred throughout the three hour movie. Regardless of the time of day, the class of the passengers, or the setting, you could catch pretty much anyone smoking on that doomed ship. And had the ship not sank, I wonder how many of those passengers would have eventually died from lung cancer. I know it’s just a portrayal, but this time period (early twentieth century) was the prime time for the tobacco industry / prevalence of cigarette smoking. Back then, it was encouraged to smoke, even by doctors and dentists.



There was little to no concern about cigarette smoking until the mid-twentieth century. The prevalence of lung cancer and other complications among cigarette smokers became too large to ignore around 1950’s, and eventually a decline of cigarette use was seen beginning in the 1960’s. What fascinates me the most about cigarette smoking and this obvious addiction among the general population is how it was viewed and handled, and how that has changed so significantly in a (relatively) short period of time. Back then, I can hardly believe anyone would’ve viewed it as an addiction (like caffeine, or our cell phones -- yes I’m referencing today’s debate), as nearly everyone did it, and it wasn’t “bad” for you. Just imagine if every addiction was treated like smoking had, with such a quick decline of use in a short period of time. I’m interested to see how time progresses, and if things that we view as “harmless addictions” become suddenly extremely detrimental to our health. Now in 2018, I don’t think I can go a day without seeing some sort of “quit smoking” commercial on TV. It’s fascinating to see how far we’ve come in less than a century.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894634/