9781422271858

9781422271858

Smoking and vaping addiction

CIGARETTES AND TOBACCO PRODUCTS The Predatory Drug DEADLY VAPING ADDITIVES CBD, THC, and Contaminants FACTS AND FIGURES Smoking and Vaping NICOTINE ADVERTISING AND SALES Big Business for Young Clientele NICOTINE AND GENETICS The Hereditary Predisposition NICOTINE TREATMENTS Fighting to Breathe Again NICOTINE Negative Effects on the Adolescent Brain PEER PRESSURE TO SMOKE OR VAPE Finding the Strength in You VAPING The New Cool Way to a Shorter Life

ERIC BENAC

PO Box 221876, Hollywood, FL 33022 (866) MCP-BOOK (toll-free) • www.masoncrest.com

Copyright © 2022 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-4579-8 Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4222-4631-3 ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-7185-8 Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with the Library of Congress

Developed and Produced by National Highlights, Inc. Cover and Interior Design: Tara Raymo • CreativelyTara Layout: Priceless Digital Media

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Chapter 1: Nicotine Affects Learning Capabilities .................. 7 Chapter 2: Nicotine May Cause Emotional Troubles ............ 21 Chapter 3: Nicotine May Cause Behavioral Problems. .......35 Chapter 4: Nicotine Decreases Brain Size .............................. 51 Chapter 5: Nicotine May Cause Other Addictions ................. 65 Chapter Notes ............................................................................ 83 Series Glossary of Key Terms ................................................... 88 Further Reading . ....................................................................... 90 Internet Resources .................................................................... 91 Index . .......................................................................................... 92 Author’s Biography / Credits . .................................................. 96 CONTENTS KEY ICONS TO LOOK FOR: Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills. Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic sports moments, and much more! Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

Since 2014, American teenagers have been more likely to use e-cigarettes than any other tobacco product. By 2020, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, more than 3.6 million Americans under the age of eighteen were vaping regularly, with more than a million of them using e-cigarettes on a daily basis.

WORDS TO UNDERSTAND

cognitive: referring to the operation of the brain or any process or term related to thinking and learning neuroteratogen: a substance that causes physical or functional defects in the brain or central nervous system psychosocial: referring to the interaction of a person’s psychology with their social surroundings

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Nicotine: Negative Effects on the Adolescent Brain

1 CHAPTER

Nicotine Affects Learning Capabilities Nicotine is a chemical found in the tobacco plant, which has been chopped, smoked, chewed, and inhaled for centuries. When nicotine hits the bloodstream, it spreads throughout the body and ends up impacting various areas. When the brain is exposed to nicotine, it often reacts in ways that can be harmful to a teenager’s mental state. For example, nicotine can severely impact a teen’s learning capacity in subtle, but deeply rooted, ways. A teenager who smokes cigarettes may find it more difficult to focus in class. He or she may also struggle to retain the information that was taught. The teen’s grades may start slipping, and his or her behavior may start to change due to emotional troubles related to this diminishment of learning capacity. Even teenagers who use e-cigarettes or electronic vapor devices may find themselves at a higher risk of psychosocial problems and emotional problems related to learning. In many ways, the impact on the mind is the most troubling issue that adolescents experience due to nicotine. It is often at the root of more extensive issues—problems that can become lifelong struggles that may rob a person of years of their life.

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Nicotine Is a Poison Like any drug, nicotine is dangerous when taken in heavy doses. Even over-the-counter medicines like aspirin can cause health problems when overused. However, nicotine offers almost no medical benefit to those who use it. In fact, it is very detrimental to users’ physical health. Cigarettes and electronic vapor devices introduce cancer- causing chemicals that will damage the users’ lungs as well as other organs. Nicotine is a dangerous poison.

A farmer collects tobacco leaves, which will be dried and processed into cigarettes, cigars, and other products that contain nicotine, an addictive drug. Each year about 8 million metric tons of tobacco are grown, with China, India, Brazil, and the United States being the largest producers of the crop. 8 Nicotine: Negative Effects on the Adolescent Brain

That’s why even vapers are at a high risk for nicotine-related health problems, even as teens. This poisonous nature is common even in chewing tobacco—chewers often report a substantially higher risk of lip, gum, and jaw cancer. All of these health issues make nicotine products some of the most dangerous on the market. Don’t think that the brain is free from the dangers of this drug, either. Unfortunately, nicotine has been shown to impact the development of the brain in many ways. For example, it can slow the development of the more complex areas of the cerebral and frontal cortex areas—regions of the brain that are critical for intelligence, memory, and emotional control. This damage is particularly an issue in adolescent users and can rapidly trigger a multitude of problems that will affect them for the rest of their lives. The mental problems related to nicotine use only grow worse as a teen ages and continues to smoke. Fully understanding all of these issues is critical to ensuring that a teen never starts using nicotine or quits as soon as possible. The very nature of nicotine often makes this process difficult, however, because the addictive qualities inherent in its nature are often much harder for teens to resist and control than for adults.

Long-Term Exposure May Cause Decreased Learning Capacity

The poisonous nature of nicotine is even more noticeable in teens. The teenage years are an important period for learning and cognitive development. During this time, the brain undergoes a dramatic change, or rewiring, as old connections are eliminated, and new ones are created. As a result, young adults need to do what they can to ensure that their mind develops as much as possible. Unfortunately,

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Nicotine Affects Learning Capabilities

nicotine use during this period of their life may decrease their learning capacity and trigger further difficulties. The longer that a teen smokes, the worse these effects are likely to get. Recidivism of this type is often a big part of addiction—the Long-term exposure to cigarette smoke, nicotine vapor, and other substances that irritate the lungs can cause a serious breathing disorder called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. Some forms of COPD include chronic bronchitis and emphysema. These are the result of irreversible damage to the lungs that makes it hard for a person to breathe.

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Nicotine: Negative Effects on the Adolescent Brain

substance causes mental injuries that make a person less capable of saying no to using a substance. For example, a study entitled “Cognitive Effects of Nicotine: Recent Progress” found that people who smoked—defined as those with a tobacco use disorder, or TUD—were often at a higher risk of developing cognitive defects. The study also found that people with pre-existing cognitive defects were at a higher risk of nicotine use and struggled to quit. “Cumulating evidence suggests that individuals with cognitive deficits may be both more vulnerable to developing TUD, and may have more difficulty in quitting smoking,” wrote researchers Gerald Valentine and Mehmet Sofuoglu. “Cognitive deficits associated with TUD are well documented in both clinical and population-based studies.… Cigarette smokers have cognitive deficits in auditory–verbal and visuospatial learning, visuospatial memory, cognitive efficiency, executive skills, general intelligence, and processing speed.” In essence, this means that people who smoke are damaging their brains and reducing their capacity to learn new knowledge and apply previously learned concepts. In their conclusion, Valentine and Sofuoglu wrote, “Smokers demonstrated deficits in attention, working memory, and impulse control functions, although the severity of the deficits was not correlated with the duration of tobacco use. Furthermore, smokers with even low amounts of lifetime tobacco exposure display these deficits, suggesting that individuals with deficits in certain cognitive domains may be predisposed to developing TUD.” That last sentence is particularly critical to note: it suggests that people with certain types of cognitive problems may be more prone to addiction than others. This health problem can be hard to manage in adults, let alone in teens. The brain, in this way, may betray a teen and impulsively get them to smoke and then trap them into a cycle of addiction that further damages their thinking skills.

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Nicotine Affects Learning Capabilities

As a result, once-promising students may find learning more difficult and may even struggle to pass tests that they once would have easily aced. Though the impact isn’t devastating enough to fully reduce a person’s mental capacity, it could cause subtle, but noticeable, losses in mental focus when a teen most needs it. Even worse, it could stop emotional growth in many ways. Adolescents are Impacted the Most Although these emotional and intellectual issues are common in everybody who smokes or uses nicotine, they are worse in teens or even younger children. That’s because the brain is still developing even into a person’s early twenties. The brain needs all of the help

PARENTS’ EXAMPLE

Parental smoking may make teen behaviors even worse. Multiple studies have investigated the parental influence on teen smoking. The results of these studies have been mixed. A few studies have found that teens whose parents are smokers are no more likely to be smokers as adults than are those whose parents did not smoke. A majority of the scientific studies, however, have found that teenagers whose parents smoke are much more likely to become smokers when they are adults than are the children of nonsmokers. Most researchers conclude that the social acceptance of tobacco use that is inherent in a smoking parent, combined with easier access to cigarettes or other nicotine products, make it easier for teenagers whose parents smoke to justify their own experimentation with nicotine products.

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Nicotine: Negative Effects on the Adolescent Brain

To learn more about the “Juul Effect,” scan here.

that it can get to become stronger and more resistant to various types of damage. Teens who use nicotine are, sadly, stunting this growth when it matters the most to their development. This problem is more difficult than the impact that nicotine has on adults for a number of reasons. First of all, most adults past their thirties or so have, in a sense, reached their intellectual peak. That doesn’t mean that they can’t continue to grow or develop themselves mentally. Far from it—studies have shown that even those in their sixties, seventies, and eighties can learn new skills. However, it will take a lot more repetition to achieve positive results than it would if they had tried to learn when they were younger. As a result, delays in a teen’s brain development are more devastating than they would be for an adult. While it is true that continued nicotine use as an adult will still decrease a person’s cognitive skills, further development won’t be stunted, because true

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Nicotine Affects Learning Capabilities

COPD results in lowered levels of oxygen in the blood, which can damage neurons and affect brain function. In addition, people with COPD have higher levels of certain body chemicals that are linked to thinking and memory problems.

brain growth stopped long ago. As a result, an adult isn’t stunting their peak potential so much as they are limiting their capacities later in life. By contrast, a teen who uses nicotine is stopping their true potential from developing. This factor was noted in “Nicotine and the Adolescent Brain,” a recent scientific study. “There is a substantial literature that shows nicotine to be a neuroteratogen that exerts long-term, maturational effects at critical stages of brain development,” the study’s authors reported. “As discussed in the present review, adolescence is a sensitive period for maturation of brain circuits that regulate cognition and emotion, with resulting vulnerability to the effects of nicotine and tobacco.”

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Nicotine: Negative Effects on the Adolescent Brain

The scientists who conducted the study examined the effects of nicotine on the brains of young rodents, which are similar in important ways to human teenagers’ brains when it comes to cognitive development. Unfortunately, the researchers found that rodents that are exposed to nicotine “exhibit many of the same physiological and behavioral changes as human adolescents” and that they struggle to learn new skills. These rodents negotiated mazes more slowly and solved food-based puzzles less effectively than rats that were not exposed to nicotine. All of these points emphasize a crucial point—nicotine impacts cognitive development in a way that worsens nicotine use by making a teen less capable of withstanding use triggers. And as a teen’s use of

Nicotine exposure during adolescence can hamper a young person’s brain development. Scientists have found that the brain continues to develop until a person is about twenty-five years old.

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Nicotine Affects Learning Capabilities

Nicotine use affects a teenager’s ability to learn new concepts and apply that knowledge to solve problems.

this drug worsens, they are more likely to start abusing more nicotine or expanding their use to other items. Sadly, this substance use problemmay become a lifelong pattern that further decreases their cognitive abilities. A Trickle-Down Effect May Occur The worst thing about this decrease in cognitive skills is the way that creates a trickle-down effect that can make a person’s life worse. Though these changes are often quite subtle, they can compound each other to become a major issue. The story of Judy H., a

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Nicotine: Negative Effects on the Adolescent Brain

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