Nicotine
What Kind of Drug Is It?
Nicotine is the ingredient in tobacco that causes changes to the brain and behavior. Tobacco, a broad-leafed plant that originated in the Americas, is one of the most widely abused PSYCHOACTIVE, or mind-altering, substances in the world. In the United States alone, one in four men and one in five women smoke cigarettes, cigars, pipes, or use oral products such as chewing tobacco or snuff. In other parts of the world the percentage of users is even higher.
Nicotine use typically begins among Americans between the ages of eleven and eighteen—an age group too young to buy the product legally. Young users soon discover that nicotine is habit-forming, that all the ways of taking it pose great health risks, and that it can lead to troubles on the job and sometimes an early death.
Movies and tobacco advertisements present nicotine use as a glamorous, rebellious, adult activity. And adults can smoke legally. What the advertisements do not note, however, is the fact that one-third of all smokers live below the poverty level; that the more educated a person is, the less likely he or she is to use tobacco; and that an estimated one billion people will die from tobaccorelated illnesses worldwide in the twenty-first century.
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