Age limitaion

All around the globe, there are age limitation in every coutries to limit underage drinking. There are countries with high age and countries with low age. The age varies in different parts of the world. In Japan the age is 20 and while in United states, it is 21. There are countries without any age limits at all. The reason why there is none is because of religious purposes as well as the traditions. However, smoking at early days would definitely hurt the child’s bodies therefore, it is not really recommended

http://smoking.ygoy.com/2008/04/17/what-is-the-legal-smoking-age/
Mitsu

Quitting cigarettes

When a person smoke a cigarette, how fast does he or she gets addicted? The answer is immediately. The nicotine and the chemicals inside of cigarette will stimulate the persons’ brains and it makes less stressful for the smoker. However when that stimulation ends, the smoker wants to feel relaxed again so he or she lights up another cigarette and starts smoking. This addiction cannot be stopped so easily and a stron will to stop is required to stop smoking.

Quitting smoking is never too late. As fast as the smoker realizes the dangers of smoking, the risks of endangering their lives will decrease. So it is never too late to quit smoking. As fast as the smokers stop smoking, the longer they can live.

In order to quit smoking, there are therapies and medicines needed for the smoker to stop smoking. The most well-known quitting method is nicotine replacement therapies. Skin patch is one of the examples of nicotine replacement therapy. There are other methods such as inhalers and nasal sprays. Inside of these methods, there is a medicine called Bupropion, this is the medicine that helps the smokers to quit smoking.  
So far in United States of America, there are over 50 million people succeeded in quitting smokingAs long as the person wishes to quit, the result will follow forsure.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007438.htm
Mitsu

shortterm and longterm effects of smoking

There are short term effects caused by cigarette. Cigarette can give the smokers hard time breathing, therefore doing an exercise after smoking will give the smoker hard time, because he or she does not get enough oxygen in their lungs. The resperation system will decrease due to smoking cigarette, therefore those who have asthma may end up killing theirselves.

Theere are also long term effects of cigarettes. The cigarette will damage the entire respiration system, this is why the smokers have hard time breathing. But not only that,  the smokers will hurt their arteries and veins. This could lead to death because there would be clots in the arteries and veins. And of course, smoking cigarette would give high risks of cancer. So, if you want to live, don’t smoke.

http://stopsmokingonlinetoday.com/quit/effects-of-smoking/

Mitsu

Harmful chemicals in cigarette

Inside of cigarette, there are numerous amount of chemicals. Out of them, there are harmful chemicals, they are Cyanide, Benzene, Formaldehyde Methanol (wood alcohol) acetone,  Ammonia. These chemicals are considered harmful and are the reasons why people die from smoking. Many of them are gas or liquid, therefore you do not know when you are infected by them. And if you think hard about it, these chemicals are disgusting. For example acetone, acetone is a nail polish remover, made and usually used for nails, however this chemical is included in cigarettes. Benzene is liquid that can cause cancer and leukemia.

http://www.stop-smoking-programs.org/chemicals-in-cigarettes.html
Mitsu

Smoking survey

 Today, I would like to introduce the smoking survey which I made by SurveyMonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VPTCMNN). In order to prevent teenagers from smoking, I believe it is necessary for me to know your ideas. This survey helps you realize the danger of smoking and there will be a fun quiz with answers given at the end. The quiz is based on careful research compiled by WHO.
The purpose of the survey is finding better solutions as well as informing you how harmful
smoking is. In the question no.1, I ask your nationality, gender and age in order to know a little
about you. In the questions no.2 and 3, I ask why you started/didn't start smoking, because I
want to understand what makes people become friendly/unfriendly with cigarettes. In the
question no.4, I observe the relationship between the type of smokers around you and how likely
you are to smoke. For example, I thought if someone has a friend who is a heavy smoker, he or
she has more chances to start smoking cigarettes. In the questions no.5 and 6, I ask if your
country has any regulations on cigarettes and what you'll do to stop underage smoking so that I
can apply some of them to the Japanese smoker's cases. In the question no.7, I ask a fun quiz
about cigarettes so as to emphasize disadvantages inherent in smoking. Finally, in the question
no.8, I ask you to make a comment on this survey to make it better.
Anyone who is interested in this survey, please cooperate with me. The survey won't take
much time (10 minutes at most) and there are many interesting topics in it. Besides, the survey is
completely anonymous. That is to say, I won't know any personal information except what you
answered in the questions no.1~8.
Many thanks for your cooperation. The results will be published in this blog by the end of this
month.

Yuki Taniguchi

Two yahoo groups

Today, let me introduce a couple of anti-smoking groups. The first one is NicotineBusters

(http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/NicotineBusters/), which is an on-line group of challengers trying to stop smoking and break free from the addiction. According to the description, NicotineBusters offers many helpful files and links so that participants share information and encouragement to achieve their goal of staying non-smokers. Although this group focuses on proper ways to stop smoking, I'm sure I will get sufficient information. For example, I can learn how addictive smoking is by reading stories written by former smokers. Besides, NicotineBusters has 1437 members, which are not too few or too many compared with other groups, and it was established 12 years ago, so I feel this group is reliable and trustworthy. Even though NicotineBusters requires membership to check messages, I expect no spams in this group because it is moderated to keep a high quality of help. For these reasons, I believe NicotineBusters develops a good relationship with users.

The second one is quitsmoking(http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/quitsmoking/), whose purpose is literally to help smokers quit smoking. In this group, participants discuss issues concerning cigarettes, mainly nicotine addiction, and methods of giving them up. Quitsmoking also provides us with a large-scale Website containing over 150 pages. Therefore, I think this group will be a good source of information. In fact, quitsmoking is composed of 3474 members, so the email volume is fairly high with hundreds of messages a day. However, as far as I've checked, there were no spams in this group although it is not moderated. Since it was created 13 years ago, quitsmoking has been the place where those who try to give up smoking encourage one another. Now, I'll explain some recent conversation in this group, which is about a lucky guy who gave up smoking.

The master of the thread gave up smoking two years ago and asked his physician for

prescription for a lung CT scan due to his smoking history. It came back “abnormal”, that is, if

he had continued smoking he would probably be dead now. By posting his experience, he made

us realize how dangerous smoking is considering latent damage. In fact, there were several

comments answering, “you are a lucky guy” or “I became afraid of smoking” and so on.

Yuki Taniguchi

Word cloud 2

Here’s another word cloud I just created. When I created I was surprised to see that the fonts are hard to read and the background color was pitch black. I can tell that it is about something bad and maybe inappropriate. It has words like young, age, smoking, and tobacco as large texts. I can also tell that this is about age of smoking and the underage smoking.

              Mitsu Nakata