Children are the hope of tomorrow. Childhood is the most precious time in each and every person's life.But nowadays  most of our children lost their valuable childhood due to their Tobacco addiction and usage. This Tobacco usage starts from schools, colleges etc…

About 20 million children of ages 10- 14 are estimated to be Tobacco addicted. To this astounding figure, about 500 new users are added every day, making two million new users every year. The main reasons children begin to use Tobacco is (1) peer pressure (2) media influence (3) family problems (4) stress. At first they use tobacco very small amount to get just a relaxation from the stress after that this Tobacco usage become an addiction. It become out of control. Unluckly this addiction will destroy the future of our children.

The addictiveness of Tobacco is due to its pharmaco kinetic properties of nicotine, or the way it is processed by the body, when we smoke it fastly enters the lungs and the nicotine is absorbed rapidly in the blood and delivered quickly to the brain, so the nicotine level peak with in few seconds of smoking. Nicotine dependence occurs when you need nicotine and can't stop using it. Nicotine is the chemical in Tobacco that makes it hard to quit. Nicotine produces pleasing effect in your brain, but these effects are temporary. Tobacco users are mainly categorised into a continuum of 5 stages :  precontemplation, contemplation, preparation,  action, and maintanence.

The main effects of Tobacco on children are (1) acute respiratory diseases such as pneumonia, bronchitis (2) lung cancer (3) emphysema (4) heart diseases. Smoking also increase risk for tuberculosis, certain eye diseases, problems of the immune system, middle ear diseases, more frequent and severe asthma etc….Moreover Tobacco make children more vulnerable to mental illness. Tobacco increases mental health illness symptoms: it increases level of depression, anxiety and stress attention deficit hyper activity disorder.

This Tobacco is a plant grown for its leaves, which are dried and fermented before being put in Tobacco products. Some of the forms of Tobacco such as cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and chewing tobacco. Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable diseases, disability etc…

So we have to stop or decrease the usage of Tobacco among children. For that we should follow strict laws against the purchase of Tobacco and tobacco products. Also take steps to ban the selling of Tobacco products near the school compound. So that we can protect our children.