By: Joshua Joseph

Why are world hunger, extreme poverty, and environmental damage facing our world today? What causes them? A great contributor to these global issues is something almost every person on the earth is familiar with. We all know what it looks like and we all know at least one person who uses it. We’ve seen it on the big screen too many times to count. Governments have accepted it, but while some groups of people want to end its distribution, sale, and consumption. I’m not referring to a rare new drug on the market or nuclear warfare. I’m talking about a cigarette.

Cigarettes and smoking kills many people every year, it also increases poverty, contributes to world hunger, damages the environment, and reduces economic productivity. But how does a simple cigarette cause so many global issues?

Not only does a cigarette contain over 4000 dangerous chemicals, some of which include rat poison, cyanide, and paint thinner, but they are also as addictive as heroine. Smoking cigarettes has many short term health effects such as bad breath, yellow hands and teeth, wrinkles and irregular breathing. Some of the long term effects include lung cancer, emphysema, and death. Smoking one cigarette may not seem like a huge risk – but that one cigarette can lead to smoking for 10 years.

Smoking cigarettes contributes to world hunger because the tobacco industry uses huge amounts of land for tobacco crops, which could otherwise be used to produce food. The tobacco industry claims that their use of land is very minor, yet their use of this land denies food from 10 to 20 million people. A common argument made by the tobacco industry is that if they stop farming tobacco, farmers will lose their jobs and become unable to support their families. The truth is, these farmers could make just as much money growing food instead of tobacco. No big deal, right?

Unfortunately, tobacco industry products also contribute to a higher illiteracy rate because more money is spent on tobacco than education. The need to buy cigarettes and the priority tobacco has over education are all ways that cigarettes are contributing to poverty.

Trees, lakes and mountains are all parts of nature that people enjoy and appreciate. It’s unfortunate that cigarettes not only kill people, but our earth as well. Land is destroyed to grow tobacco, which has affects on nearby farms including the spread of pesticides. So much for clean drinking water and healthy crops, right? Many trees are also cut down because a lot of wood is needed to cure tobacco leaves. Trillions of cigarettes are made around the world, and approximately 4.5 trillion are littered in streets, parks, and on beaches. Should 4.5 trillion littered cigarette butts be something to worry about? Well, a single cigarette filter can take up to 25 years to naturally break down, so it’s obvious that cigarettes are damaging to our environment. The pesticides that are used to farm tobacco are extremely toxic and dangerous. These poisons also contaminate drinking water and kill livestock. It’s bad enough that the act of smoking cigarettes kill people, but their creation also destroys, contaminates, and pollutes the environment.

The tobacco industry is aware that sales are going down in developed countries because of tobacco control initiatives. In an attempt to increase the sale of cigarettes, tobacco industries have expanded their international operations into Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Arab nations, and Africa, where there are few tobacco control initiatives. Since less people in these areas are educated about the dangerous effects of smoking, and the mass advertisements and propaganda that the tobacco industry implements in these countries, more people will be willing to smoke. The saying “Knowledge is power” applies here because without knowledge of the dangers of smoking, people remain powerless and therefore more susceptible to the dangers of smoking cigarettes.

Many people who smoke think their only worry is that they might get cancer. The unfortunate truth is that each cigarette manufactured, sold, and smoked contributes to world hunger, extreme poverty, environmental damage, and early death. See what a single cigarette can do? Next time you see a loved one smoking, try to educate them. They may not know that a single cigarette can destroy things other than their lungs. The next time you see someone smoking a cigarette on the big screen, think to yourself about the pain, suffering, and death that was involved in creating it. Every time that person takes a drag of their cigarette, think of the people being poisoned by the pesticide use and the preventable deaths caused. Then ask yourself why is this acceptable?

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Retrieved on August 23, 2007, from http://www.bigtobaccosucks.org
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Retrieved on August 23, 2007, from http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Consumption/Tobacco.asp
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Retrieved on August 23, 2007, from http://hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/tobac-tabac/fact-fait/faq/index_e.html
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