Smoking: The Health Consequences of Tobacco Use

by Cecilia M. Schmitz and Richard A. Gray

"A readable and useful work and a
valuable resource for anyone. All levels."
-- Choice Magazine

Scope

Following an extensive introduction to the health consequences of tobacco use, the authors have prepared extended annotations of the most important English-language monographs and articles to appear in the 1980s and 1990s. These are arranged in a classified order under appropriate headings.

Schmitz and Gray set themselves three primary tasks.

• Their first task was to demonstrate that smoking constitutes a true addiction.
• Their second task was to marshal the bio-medical evidence supporting the surgeon general's claim that smoking causes cancer, heart disease, chronic obstructive lung disease, and, for women, the diseases and defects associated with smoking during pregnancy.
• Their third task was to draw a collective social and psychological portrait of the tobacco user in the United States today, with particular reference to such variables as age, sex, education, and income.

Furthermore, the authors have been concerned with other important issues, among which are:

• tobacco ingestion as a reinforcing factor in other disease processes;
• nutrition and tobacco;
• smoking cessation; and
various subtle synergisms.

Examples of synergistic effects are:

• smoking, the use of alcohol, and lung cancer;
• smoking, exposure to asbestos dust, and lung cancer; and,
• afflicting women only, smoking, the use of oral contraceptives, and heart disease.

"An economical and valuable reference tool
strongly recommended to all libraries."
-- RQ

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