Bone-thin, bedridden and struggling for every breath of air, I watched my grandmother’s life slip away because of her addiction.
Even though my grandmother had stopped smoking in 2006, she would forever feel the effects of her addiction to cigarettes until her final breath. Diagnosed with COPD in 2002, she would spend the next 19 years of her life gradually declining in health and losing much of her weight. Even with a 24/7 oxygen machine pumping fresh air into her lungs, she still couldn’t catch her breath.
Lying on her deathbed, riding the line of consciousness, she never got to say goodbye. My grandmother was stolen from my family, but companies like Marlboro who create cigarettes and companies like Juul who make vape pens still mass-produce products with nicotine in them.
Companies that sell nicotine products need to be held responsible for their wrongdoings and the lies they tell. These companies get away with causing people to have diseases like cancer and COPD, also known as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and yet remain in business.
Preying on the young and vulnerable, companies like Juul launch campaigns advertising young people vaping and showing off their vape pens. Companies like Juul don’t care if their customers die or have long-lasting health effects. Juul and many more companies care about their profit.
For years, cigarette companies have tried to market to the youth about their products. Companies know that the more an adolescent is exposed to a cigarette company’s advertisements and brand the more likely it is to be appealing to them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that cigarette smoking is the leading preventable disease or disability in the United States. The age range in which vaping is most common is 15-19 years old. That being said, companies like Juul are making an impact and advertising vape pens to children even younger. This simply must stop.
My grandmother was not the only person with health problems caused by smoking, though. According to the World Health Organization, smoking accounts for 70% of COPD cases in high-income countries, and 15.2% of people who smoke have COPD. And while the U.S. is taking some action against Juul, it is not enough. In April 2023, Juul agreed to pay $462 million over eight years to settle claims by six U.S. states of unlawfully marketing the e-cigarette to minors. The $462 million will reportedly be used to fund anti-vaping programs and education about vaping, according to CNBC.
Nicotine is an addictive poisonous chemical that is put into vape pens and cigarettes. Nicotine is used for the sole purpose of creating an addiction, thus providing more profit for the companies supplying and making nicotine products when consumers have to buy more of the product because they are addicted.
Though often not addictive in the same way, marijuana is also a drug that can cause reliance. The use of marijuana not only is becoming more commonly used by teenagers. Through the popularity of vapes health risks of using marijuana are showing. Marijuana has been linked to harm to brain development and adult mental health issues when marijuana is used by teens according to the CDC.
The truth is teenagers either know someone who vapes or they do it themselves. At school, students often cannot use the restroom or walk in the hallways without seeing someone vaping, whether it be nicotine or marijuana. While the administration does suspend anyone found with a vaping product, the suspension will not fix the students’ addiction. Warren Central is one of many schools faced with a vaping issue. Clubs like the notable Just Say No club may pop up at schools across the nation, but the question remains of whether their voices are actually heard by students struggling with addiction.
Teenagers are not the only ones facing the issue of being addicted to nicotine. The Cleveland Clinic reports that 23.6 million Americans, or 8.5% of people 12 and up, are addicted to nicotine. In 2021 the National Library of Medicine reported that 46 million adults were reportedly continuously using tobacco products.
Quitting smoking or vaping is hard, and the longer a person uses these products the harder it is to withdraw. For some, this means various amounts of side effects. People have reported feeling anxious, upset or even struggling to sleep, and these are just a few of the many different side effects of withdrawing from nicotine. People have said it was hard for them to stick to their daily routine because they had worked time to smoke into their routine. Many people may have to get professional help to quit their addiction.
When a person smokes, endorphins in the brain are released giving the person smoking a good feeling. Endorphins are released when the body feels stressed or in pain, thus making it harder to quit smoking. Still, for someone who is trying to end their addiction, there are a multitude of actions that can be done. Many people use nicotine patches so that they are not smoking but still feel the feelings they would feel had they been smoking. Some medicines can help ease someone off of nicotine, as well as coaching and advisors who can help them stop smoking.
Nicotine is a harmful drug, and the companies profiting from people’s addictions to it must be held responsible. For those who want to quit smoking or vaping, a nicotine patch that reduces the nicotine that someone receives might be a stepping stone between quitting the addiction altogether.
To get help with quitting nicotine usage call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration hotline at
1-800-662-4357.