The cigarette is made up of a cylindrical paper tube, generally less than 10 cm in length and 10 mm in diameter containing finely chopped tobacco that one smokes. In practice, commercial cigarettes are not made entirely from tobacco but mixed with a large quantity of additives for increasing dependency, maintaining the brand's uniformity, enhancing the cigarette with gustative characteristics, increasing its conservation and changing the organoleptic qualities of the smoke. Poorer quality cigarettes are amalgamated with the processing dust of the ground tobacco leaf veins. Commercial cigarettes generally contain a filter in cellulose acetate or in cotton which is supposed to filter the tar. It is possible to roll one's own cigarettes, which does not in any way reduce their harmfulness.
Originally tobacco was chewed or snorted and cigarettes were not very well known in the West before the Crimea War. Their development spread at the beginning of the 20th century. Approximately 5,500 billion cigarettes are produced every year by the tobacco industry and consumed by more than 1.1 billion smokers. The harmfulness of tobacco has increased over the past few decades with cigarette manufacturers adding chemical additives to increase the assimilation of nicotine by the body, notably ammonia, and thus provoking faster dependency.
With their composition based on toxic and irritating substances, cigarettes are equally harmful to smokers and non smokers alike, leading to dependency and various illnesses such as cancers, cardiovascular accidents and chronic bronchitis.
The European HELP programme for fighting against tobacco can bring you a lot of information and support for giving up smoking.
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