Recently the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho revealed that the country’s public consumption levels of tobacco have relatively gone down compared to the previous years. But tobacco smoking remains a serious and common habit amongst the youth in Rwanda and other parts of the world.

Most people begin smoking as teens, usually because of curiosity and peer pressure. People with friends and parents who smoke are more likely to pick up the habit. The tobacco industry’s advertisements , price breaks, and other promotions for its products are another big influence in our society.

The tobacco industry spends alot of money each year to create market for its products through advertisements that show smoking as an exciting, glamorous healthy adult activity.

Anyone who starts smoking is at risk of becoming addicted to nicotine. Studies show that cigarette smoking is most likely to become a habit during teen years.

Large doses of nicotine is a poison and can kill by stopping a person’s breathing muscles. Smokers usually take in small amounts that the body can quickly break down and get rid of.

The first dose of nicotine makes a person to feel awake and alert, while later doses produce a calm, relaxed feeling. Nicotine can make new smokers, and regular smokers who get too much of it, feel dizzy or sick to their stomachs.

The resting heart rate for young smokers increases 2 to 3 beats per minute. Nicotine also lowers skin temperature and reduces blood flow in the legs and feet. It may play a role in increasing smokers’ risk of heart disease and stroke.

Many people mistakenly think that nicotine is the substance in tobacco that causes cancer. This belief may cause some people to avoid using nicotine replacement therapy when trying to quit.

Although nicotine is what gets and keeps people addicted to tobacco, other substances in tobacco are responsible for cancer.

There is some early evidence from lab-based studies that nicotine may help existing tumors grow, but whether these results apply to people is not yet known and more research is needed.

All cigarettes can damage the human body. Cigarettes are the only legal product whose advertised and intended use is known to harm the body and cause cancer.

Although some people try to make their smoking habit safer by smoking fewer cigarettes, most smokers find that hard to do. Research has found that even smoking as few as 1 to 4 cigarettes a day can lead to serious health outcomes, including an increased risk of heart disease and a greater chance of dying at a younger age.

Some people think that switching from high tar and high nicotine cigarettes to those with low tar and nicotine makes smoking safer, but this is not true.

When people switch to brands with lower tar or nicotine, they often end up smoking more cigarettes, and more of each cigarette to get the same nicotine dose as before.

Smokers have been led to believe that light cigarettes have a lower health risk and are a good option to quitting. It is important to know that a low-tar cigarette can be just as harmful as a high tar cigarette because a person often takes deeper and more puffs, and smokes them to a shorter butt length.

Hand-rolled cigarettes, while reported to be a cheaper and healthier way to smoke, are not safer than commercial brands. In fact, lifelong smokers of hand rolled cigarettes have been found to have increased risk of cancers of the larynx (voice box), esophagus (tube that connects the mouth to the stomach), mouth, and pharynx (throat) when compared with smokers of machine made cigarettes.

Herbal cigarettes, even though they do not contain tobacco, also give off tar and carbon monoxide and are dangerous to the health. The bottom line is there’s no such thing as a safe smoke.

The nicotine in cigarette smoke causes an addiction to smoking. Nicotine is an addictive drug just like heroin and cocaine.

When taken in small amounts, nicotine creates pleasant feelings that make the smoker want to smoke more. It acts on the chemistry of the brain and central nervous system, affecting the smoker’s mood.

Nicotine works very much like other addicting drugs, by flooding the brain’s reward circuits with dopamine a chemical messenger.

Nicotine also gives person a little bit of adrenaline not enough to notice, but enough to speed up the heart and raise the blood pressure.

Nicotine reaches the brain within seconds after taking a puff, but its effects start to wear off within a few minutes. This often leads the smoker to get another cigarette. If the smoker does not smoke again soon, withdrawal symptoms kick in and get worse over time.

Important to mention is that smokers usually become dependent on nicotine and suffer physical and emotional ‘psychological’ withdrawal symptoms when they stop smoking.

These symptoms include irritability, nervousness, headaches, and trouble sleeping. The true marker for addiction, though, is that people still smoke even though they know smoking is bad for them and thus affecting their lives, their health, and their families in unhealthy ways.

Tobacco smoking can cause various diseases. It also has been linked to the development of cancers of the pancreas, cervix, kidney, and stomach and some types of leukemia.

Cigars, pipes, and spit and other types of smokeless tobacco all cause cancers, too. There is no safe way to use tobacco. Pregnant women who smoke risk the health and lives of their unborn babies.

Smoking during pregnancy is linked with a greater chance of miscarriage, premature delivery, stillbirth, infant death, low birth-weight, and sudden infant death syndrome.

The author is a medical doctor at Kanombe Military Hospital.