Реферат: Essay on the article "Tobacco and Tolerance: Blowing smoke" (о вреде курения)

Международный институт экономики и финансов,1 курс,

Высшая Школа Экономики.

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on the article“Tobacco and Tolerance: Blowing smoke”.

   Notonly labour made man differ from a monkey, but also care and attention to hisfellow creatures. This is the main point of human relations and the basis ofhuman being. Animals are first of all competitors with each other, and they donot have an instinct to help their neighbours and to think about their safety.The only exception is their own cubs.

  Similarly, as a father and mother take care of a small child who doesnot yet have his own opinion on what is good and what is bad, who do not evenknow, that many seemingly innocent things harm his health greatly and causestrong addiction. Even when a child realises that, it is very hard for him tomake the right decision. And if we consider such thing as smoking, the onlyright decision is not to start it. One may argue that whether to smoke or notis the private decision of every person and no one might impose his point ofview to someone. I agree with this statement, but not always this principleprovides us with a solution to the problem of social wellbeing. People make alot of decisions connected with great risks like motorcycle riding, parachutejumping, smoking, taking drugs and so on. Some of these things have unalterableconsequences, which make people regret they have made these decisions duringthe rest of their lives. The only thing they should ask themselves is whetherthis thing is worth risking. The fewer would be the number of activities thatgreatly harm human health, and above all, of these, which are not worth riskinglike smoking, the better it would be for the health of all humanity. Theexceptions are such things as scuba diving or mountain climbing and other,because they can be justified from many reasons and they are not simple andstupid self-poisoning. I do not agree with the author of the article “Tobacco and Tolerance: Blowing smoke” that smoking is not a socialproblem but a private one and the anti-smoking program should be minimized.Those people, who have already started and have become addicted to ‘thegrayish-blue fumes’ can’t fully realize, why do they take this great risk,still acknowledging that this harms their health, and it is hard for them togive up smoking without outside help. For this noble purpose there shouldalways exist those people who can clearly realize this enormous threat as thirdpersons with their unaddicted minds. They should never stop such hard andunappreciated occupations as different anti-smoke programs and, whether smokerswant it or not, they should try to pull them out of this ‘gray and poisonousswamp’. This can be done by different government merciless limitations oftobacco producing companies, tobacco advertisements, restricting places forsmoking to minimum and so on. That is why smoking is a problem of the wholesociety, despite some of its members think that it is not, because healthypersons form a healthy society.

   Smokingcauses (or, if someone would be lucky, it might cause) many different illnesseslike lung and mouth cancer, heart disease, oral cavity. In general, the risk ofdeveloping a tobacco-related cancer depends on the intensity of the habit asdetermined by a duration of the smoking habit,a number of cigarettes smoked per day, a tar content of the cigarette, and thedepth of inhalation. Cigarette smoking is not only related to the developmentof lung cancer but also affects the development of cancer of the bladder, oralcavity, and esophagus. A non-smoker’s inhalation of smoke produced by smokersin an enclosed space also appears to heighten the risk of developing lungcancer. That is why the problem of passive smoking is also very actual and toavoid harmful consequences, governments of all countries ought to enlarge thedevelopment of a program of making isolated places for smokers to enjoy theirdangerous toys without any harm to other people.

  After the major medical revelationsabout smoking during the 1950s and'60s there was an increasing attempt to lessen the influence of tobaccoadvertising in several countries. Cigarette manufacturers in Canada agreed toend television advertising in 1972 after a bill to effect that end was passedin the Commons. In West Germany television advertising of cigarettes was to bephased out by the end of 1972.And as a result, the rate of smoking in Americahas declined from more than 40% to about 25% and the number of ex-smokers hastrebled. This was the great victory of anti-smoking programs. 

   In fact, atobacco-producing industry is very profitable, and of course, these companiestry to find or sometimes to invent some evidences and reasons why people needto use their harmful production. I believe that the anti-smoking programs causegreat losses to them, and someday they will succeed and it would not beprofitable for producers to continue operating any more.

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Figure 1 shows that the demand curve fortobacco production is very inelastic, because it is highly addictive and has noclose substitutes. Buyers could not reject a considerable amount of it inresponse to a large increase in price.

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FIGURE 1.


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FIGURE 2.

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In figure 2 we see thesituation after the government’s imposition of a sales tax. The new Supplycurve will shift upwards on the amount of tax. And because the demand fortobacco production is inelastic, this will increase total revenue of aproducer. This indirect tax would not become his profit and all the additionalmoney received would be considered as costs and go directly to the government.

(TR1= q*p             TR2= Q*P)

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Figure 3 shows us the situation where thegovernment sets a price ceiling on

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FIGURE 3.

tobaccoproduction, which would result in slightly higher demand but lower quantityproduced, as it would not be beneficial for a producer to operate at theprevious production level. If this price ceiling would be set at P lower than 2(the lowest price, at which a firm will be willing to produce), than thesefirms would not operate at all, because their costs would be greater than revenues.

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FIGURE 4

Smoking alsohas great negative externalities. This is passive smoking, which is said to beeven more harmful than the ‘active one’. Especially children fall under thethread of this problem whose parents are chain-smokers.   

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In the figure 4 we see privatedemand DD and supply SS with free market equilibrium at E and eqiul. quantityQ. With a negative consumption externality, the social marginal benefit is DD1lying below DD. E* is the socially efficient point at which output is Q*. Atthis output the marginal externality is E*F. By levying this tax of exactly E*F

per unit, the government can shift the privatesupply curve from SS to SS1

leading to a new equilibrium at F at which thesocially efficient quantity Q*

is produced and the dead-weight burden of theexternality E*HE is eliminated.

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  Although it is not possible to stop a tobacco industry immediately, themodels above show how the government could decrease its harmful influence andconsequences. For example, the money that it receives from taxation could bespent on the improvement of different rehabilitation centres for ex-smokers oron the development of anti-smoking program and advertisements. 

   Inconclusion, I believe that in any case, smoking IS one of social problems anddespite some people considering it to be like motorcycle riding or other riskyoccupation, it is not worth totally risking. The conscious part of humanityought to help smokers to give up this habit by trying to restrict smoking byall means. Then there would be one social problem less.

  Moreover, smoking is a great fraud of all humanity. If, for example, youcomb you hand in some place for many years day after day, this would firstbecome your habit and second- this would give you an inexplicable pleasure. Ifyou held a match in your mouth or crunch the tail-end of your pen for manyyears, this would also result in these things. Thus smoking provides us withthe same “virtues”, and all people, particularly at an early age, previouslypretending to each other, that smoking is a sort of pleasure and relaxation forthem, start getting pleasure just from the fact they have got addicted yearslater. This stupidity came out of tobacco producing companies, which made afetish of a considerable part of humanity from an old Indian ritual tradition.

 P.S.   Five packets of cigaretteswere smoked while writing this essay… <span Times New Roman";mso-hansi-font-family:«Times New Roman»; mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Wingdings;mso-no-proof:yes">J

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