The new laws that ban smoking in public places such as bars and restaurants, is a smart move by the state. We all know that smoking is detrimental to an individual's health by polluting one's lungs, yellowing teeth, and causing bad breath. It is a very expensive habit since prices for cigarettes go up every year and more and more people can not afford them. Smoking not only is harmful to an individual, the smoke from a cigarette directly affects the people around the smoker, otherwise known as second-hand smoke. .
Many smokers think that health problems from smoking will not happen to them and start well into childhood and that they can easily quit before that time. However, a huge percent of smokers have trouble quitting their habit of smoking and suffer from unalterable health effects. ( Egendorf 83). One of the main tribulations due to smoking is that it damages the lungs. It irritates and damages the respiratory tract. Laura Egendorf writes, "Each year a one-pack-a-day smoker smears the equivalent of a cup of tar over his or her respiratory tract. This irritation and damage cause a variety of symptoms, including bad breath, cough, sputum production, wheezing, and respiratory infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia" (86). .
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In addition to the minor symptoms to the lungs caused from smoking, there are .
also larger and far more dangerous risk factors that occur. Chronic bronchitis and .
emphysema are two examples. Chronic bronchitis is the inflammation of the lining of the bronchial tubes. When the bronchial tubes are inflamed and or infected, less air is able to flow to and from the lungs and a heavy mucus or phlegm is coughed up. Chronic bronchitis is a serious matter. Last year, 11 million Americans were diagnosed with this disease and 1,100 died from it (Wagner). Moreover, emphysema can be characterized by .
permanent structural changes in the lung tissue. The outcome of this condition is an over-inflation of structures in the lungs known as alveoli or air sacs.