Skylar Mullikin College Preparatory English Summary Response January 13, 2017
Protect the Youth
Is the health of our youth important? E-cigarettes could harm the brains of youth and cause them long term problems. What problems are these little things capable of? In the article “Use of E-Cigarettes by Young People Is Major Concern, Surgeon General Declares” by Matt Richtel, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, the United States Surgeon General, explains how awful e-cigarettes can be for our youth and the effects they can leave on their bodies.
In the article, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, describes how the use of E-cigarettes are bad for youth health. He goes on to describe how the tobacco industry turns nicotine into inhalable vapor that can damage the brains of teens and the smell can harm the people around them. ““Adolescent brains are particularly sensitive to nicotine’s effects,” and can experience “a constellation of nicotine-induced neural and behavioral alterations,” the report said. It urged stronger action to prevent young people from getting access to E-cigarettes” (par. 3). He explains how the brains of adolescents are sensitive and can change due to the effect of nicotine on their brains. On the other hand, other researchers have made claims that e-cigarettes will lead to the smoking of actual cigarettes. The use of cigarettes in youth has fallen dramatically in the past 50 years while people of older ages maintain a flat ratio. According the the Center for Disease Control, immediate action needs to be put in place. In closure, the chief surgeon is trying to prove to everybody how E-cigarettes are bad for youth and that we have to do something in order to stop it from becoming an even worse situation. Researchers state that E-cigarettes will later on lead the youth to actual cigarettes. Based on the statistics, almost 38 percent of today’s youth have smoked or dealt with a tobacco product. Nicotine has negative effects on the minds of adolescents and can even learn to behavioral disorders. The prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until the age of 25, allowing adolescents into these products, in turn, affects how they behave, how their brains adapt, and can cause extreme danger. “Chief among the concerns raised by the report is simply that “nicotine is a dangerous drug” to the developing brain, said Terry Pechacek, a professor in the school of public health at Georgia State University. It has been shown in animal models that nicotine damages the adolescent brain, he said” (par. 8). Nicotine was tested on animals and was found to cause behavioral problems within the developing brain. The percent of youth who smoke has gone up 900 percent since 2011, causing 480,000 deaths per year.
E-cigarettes may not be as dangerous as an actual cigarette because they do not include the combustion that cigarettes contain, however, they are the same thing. E-cigarettes or cigarettes are both dangerous to the body, mind, and behavioral system. What is the difference? Not much of anything is different. E-cigarettes are mimicking the tobacco industry in order to catch the attention of adolescents. “Echoing other research reports, the surgeon general’s report finds that the $3.5 billion E-cigarette industry has mimicked marketing techniques of the tobacco industry that have “found to be appealing to youth and young adults.” Of particular concern to public health advocates has been the explosive growth and marketing of flavored E-cigarettes; a study published last month in the journal Pediatrics found that young people who smoked flavored E-cigarettes were more at risk of taking up traditional smoking” (par. 10). We as a nation need to stop this. We as a nation need to protect our youth and ourselves from allowing this to become an even worse problem.
Dr. Vivek H. Murthy talks about how bad E-cigarettes are for our youth and how the brains are not fully developed when adolescents use these products. Change needs to occur. A stop to these products reaching our youth, needs to stop.