Question by Tina: can you proof read my essay and tell me what you think and if theres any punctuation i need to correct?
The Effects of a Mindfulness Manipulation on Adolescent Smoking
Isn’t smoking great? It’s not like cigarettes kill so many people a year and it’s not like
“second hand smoke” even harms non-smokers. Right, Wrong Smoking can cause trouble, Tobacco smoke is a human killer, and even if you don’t smoke you can be in harm.
Evidence suggests that smoking cigarettes increases the likelihood of suffering from heart disease, emphysema, lung cancer, high blood pressure, and premature aging. The smoker is also at risk of many short-term health consequences such as chronic cough, yellow teeth, and unpleasant breath. The American Cancer Society estimates that cigarettes are responsible for about 431,000 deaths in the United States each year. Lung cancer accounts for about 30 percent of all cancer deaths in the United States, and smoking accounts for nearly 90 percent of lung cancer deaths. The smoking habit and addiction to nicotine usually begin at an early age. In the United States, more than 70 percent of adults who smoke began smoking before the age of 18. This fact has led to particular concern over smoking in teenagers and young adults.
Tobacco industries direct 90% of recommendation their cigarette advertisements toward today’s youth, hoping to hook another young adolescent into their money making scheme. Onset of smoking in children occurs at an early age due to a number of factors that include pro-social smoking advertisements, peer and even parents in certain circumstances. Primary prevention techniques that attempt to stop the behavior before it starts are effective because children are still young enough to be molded and influenced accordingly by the proper role-models.
Preventative measures, such as informational campaigns are ineffective because they are unrealistic and fail to emphasize on the here and now. These measures focus on the future health risks that may occur 20 or 30 years down the line, which is much to long for a twelve-year-old to concern himself about. Adolescents also believe that they are invincible and therefore not subject to the health risks of all other smokers. For a young adolescent, life is still novel and carefree. The health risks of smoking are not part of a twelve-year-olds mindset-at least not until he or she is grandpa’s age.
A common habit difficult to resist when tempted. Fear manipulations lack preventative power because many of the health risks of smoking are long term, for a young teenager-what out of sight is out of mind. Fear manipulations are unrealistic simply because of the waiting period before the onset of disease.
Early teens spend most of their time with peers, rather than parents. Mom and Dad play more of a secondary role during the teen years. It makes sense that young teens are easily persuaded by their peer group simply because the greater part of the day is spent interacting with them. Parents do not become the active roll model until dinner time for a few hours until lights out. If a youngster believes that smoking is common and normal, he or she may say if everyone else does it, so will I.
Approximately 7 million tons of commercial tobaccos are grown each year, with a value of $ 39 billion. Leading tobacco-growing countries are China, the United States, India, Brazil, Turkey, and Zimbabwe. Tobacco is an economically important crop for many nations—about 2 million tons of unmanufactured tobacco leaves, at a value of about $ 6,500 per ton, are exported each year worldwide. Brazil leads in exports, with about 15 percent of the total, followed closely by the United States, with about 11 percent of the total. The United States exports the most cigarettes and other manufactured tobacco products. Of the approximately 635 billion cigarettes made in the United States in 1999, about one-fourth were exported.
Despite all this there may still be faith for some who want to quit. Studies of ex-smokers show that their risk of dying from smoking-related disease decreases with each year of abstinence. Smokers who quit before the age of 50 reduce their risk of life-threatening disease by half compared with those who continue smoking. Since the surgeon general’s report in 1964, the proportion of males who smoke has decreased from more than 50 percent to about 28 percent while the percentage of women who smoke has fallen from about 34 percent to 23 percent. Today, about 44 million Americans have quit smoking cigarettes.
The question to be addressed is what can be done to motivate healthy behavior. Hypocrisy manipulations have been used in the past to decrease the frequency of unwanted behaviors. Hypocrisy manipulations promote behavior change because they motivate a person to think about their inconsistencies.
In light of the disease risks associated with tobacco products and their associated high health-care costs, many individuals and health organizations have lobbied for public policy changes that would change the way tobacco products are regulated, manufactured, marketed, and sold in the United States. In November 1998 the tobacco industry and the attorneys general of 46 states, along with representatives of the public health field and lawyers representing smokers, announced an agreement that bans outdoor cigarette advertising and the use of cartoon characters in advertising, a practice that may attract young people to smoking. The agreement also requires tobacco companies to pay $ 206 billion during the next 25 years to fund antismoking public education programs, smoking cessation programs, tobacco-related medical research, and reimbursement to states for some of the health-care costs associated with treating smokers.
Last but not least finally, in late 1999 Philip Morris, the nation’s largest cigarette maker, publicly acknowledged that smoking is addictive and causes serious health problems.
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Answer by RE
There are tons of mistakes in this essay. Unfortunately, it is way to long for me to retype it and correct it. I wish you luck.
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