Smoking

Uncommon card · No. 95181

Smoking is the combustion of a substance, usually plant material, and the inhalation of resulting fumes. Today, smoking is mostly practiced by rolling the dried leaves of the tobacco plant into a cigarette. Other forms of tobacco smoking include the use of smoking tobacco with a pipe or cigar, or using a bong. Cigarette smokers almost always inhale the smoke; most pipe and cigar smokers do not inhale. Smoking is primarily practiced as a route of administration for psychoactive chemicals because the active substances within the burnt, dried plant leaves (or other chemical) can vaporize into a gaseous state and be delivered into the respiratory tract, where they are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream through the lungs and can reach the central nervous system. In the case of tobacco smoking, these active substances are a mixture of aerosol particles that include the pharmacologically active alkaloid nicotine, which stimulates the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brain, and other...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Susanne Nilsson, CC BY-SA 2.0