Nicotine
...other. An early explorer of the Americas, Rodrigo de Jerez, brought the habit of smoking tobacco back to Spain around 1504. By 1511, smoking was popular throughout Spain, and by 1531, Europeans were cultivating tobacco, the "sweet" Nicotiana tabacum. As its popularity grew, tobacco gained value. In the American Colonies, tobacco was used as money throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. For hundreds of years, most people used tobacco in cigar pipe, chew and snuff forms. Cigarettes were a little more difficult, for to smoke them you had to keep a pouch and roll your own. In 1884 James Bonsack received the patent for the first cigarette-rolling machine. This was the beginning of the tobacco industry we know today. Nicotine in tobacco mainly causes the addiction for more. In addition to nicotine, cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 different chemicals. The vast majority of these chemicals are added to the tobacco to add to its addictiveness, improve its flavour, and/or to increase burn rate, which increases sales. From this there are many short term effects including discoloured teeth, weight loss, bad breath, shortness of breath, increases cavities/tooth decay, constricts blood vessels, increases urine output, increases blood pressure and increases heart rate. However there are many long term effects as well and these include heart and lung and other diseases, stroke, physical/psychological addiction, many types of cancers, stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, heart attacks, impaired sense of taste and smell, decreased physical stamina, wrinkled skin and erosion of the teeth. Also smoking during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage, low birth weight, premature birth, breathing and other health problems and even Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Nicotine is not illegal, and neither is tobacco or smoking. Non-smokers are now aware of the harms caused by passive smoking, and many restrictions on where people can smoke have been implemented, for example there is no smoking on public transport, in many pubs and clubs, etc. The tobacco industry is under a constant siege of attacks by politicians, the media, scientists, and society at...