All I Want Is Your Money And Your Health
Growing up in smoke is dangerous because every cigarette is doing you damage. Tobacco comes from the tobacco plant. Leaves of the plant may be smoked, inhaled in form of snuff, or chewed. Tobacco smoke contains about 4000 chemicals. Many of them (nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide) are very harmful. Tobacco use remains the leading cause of death in the United States, causing more than 400,000 deaths each year and resulting in an annual cost of more than $50 billion in direct medical costs. Each year, smoking kills more people than AIDS, alcohol, drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides, and fires.
1/ Smoke does a lot of damage – and not just to smokers. Anyone who’s near a lit cigarette, pipe or cigar is probably breathing second-hand smoke; a combination of the smoke from the burning tobacco, and whatever the smoker exhales. Thousands more become sick. Just like smokers, a non-smoker breathing second-hand smoke is exposed to roughly 3,700 different chemicals. Many of them can be poisonous; others are powerful cancer-causing substances. The more second-hand smoke you breathe, the greater your risk of a heart attack or stroke – and the greater your risk of lung cancer. It can make breathing more difficult and trigger asthma. In November 1999, the U.S.-based National Cancer Institute released the most comprehensive study ever done on second-hand smoke. The study confirms the link to lung cancer, heart disease, nasal sinus cancer and a range of other diseases. Here are some tips for smokers who want to limit the impact of second-hand smoke on their friends and family:
Smoke outside. Cigarette smoke can stay for hours in a room, even if a window is open.
Try not to smoke when there are other people in your car. It’s one of the most airtight places you can find, giving the smoke nowhere to escape.
If you’re visiting a restaurant where smoking is allowed, take a table with your family in the non-smoking area. Then slip away once or twice for a break when you need to.
2/ By now, almost everyone knows that smoking and other tobacco use causes cancer. But did you know it's also the number one cause of heart disease and emphysema, which is a disease that affects the lungs. A cocktail of more than 3,700 substances — many of them cancer- causing — hits your lungs. Poisonous compounds like carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide and ammonia gas enter your bloodstream. Meanwhile, nicotine begins to feed the cycle of addiction. According to the U.S surgeon Generals panel, in over-all terms, men who smoke less than 10 cigarettes a day have a 40% higher death rate from all causes than non-smokers. Ten to 19 cigarettes a day mean a 70% higher rate; one to two packs a day, 90% higher; and more than two packs a day, 120%. Men who started smoking before 20 years of age “have a substantially higher death rate than those who began after age 25,” the committee reported. The risk increases with the number of years of smoking and is higher for men who stop after age 55 than those who stop earlier. For specific diseases, the report said average male smokers will get lung cancer 9 to 10 times more often than non-smokers, and heavy smokers 20 times more often. “The data for women, while less extensive, points in the same direction,” it said. The risk in all cases “is diminished by discontinuing smoking.” Research shows that if you use tobacco, you're more suitable to physical injury. A study by the U.S. Army found that heavy smokers were twice as likely to be injured while exercising as non- smokers. Physically smokers broke bones and sprained ankles more often than non-smokers. And the more the soldiers smoked, the more likely they were to develop blisters on 160-km marches. It isn't just soldiers, and it isn't just young people who face a higher risk of injury. Older women who smoke, for example, get more hip fractures. Researchers at St. Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal London School of Medicine in the U.K. reported recently "of all hip fractures, one in eight is attributed to smoking." To understand why tobacco is so harmful and so addictive, it helps to know a bit about its primary ingredient - nicotine. Nicotine is a powerful nerve stimulant. It is also extremely toxic and has been classified as the most addictive drug in existence. Two or three drops of pure nicotine, if taken all at once, would kill the average person. Some people think they can cut down on these chemicals by smoking "light" or "low-yield" cigarettes. And it's true that these cigarettes - when measured by machines - may have less tar and nicotine, levels of chemical exposures are determined more by the way smokers smoke than by the brand they smoke. But those machines don't smoke the same way you do. Filters have vent holes that reduce the potency of smoke going into the machine — holes that are blocked by smokers' fingers or lips. And many smokers compensate for the lower tar and nicotine by smoking more cigarettes, taking more puffs per cigarette or inhaling more deeply
In conclusion: When you stop smoking you get your sense of smell and taste back, your cough goes a way you’ll digest your food more ordinarily, feel more alive, it’ll be easier to climb stairs, no yellow teeth from the build up of tar, no bad breath, and the most important thing is that you’ll live longer. . The only why to quit smoking is to just quit, all these products wont work, you will have to convince yourself to quit that’s all it takes. It is never too late to quit, so it is easier to quit now than later.
References:
1/The State of Massachusetts has been one of the leaders in the fight against tobacco addiction; www.quitnet.org
2/The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse www.ccsa.ca works to minimize the harm caused by tobacco and other drugs.
3/The Centers for Disease Control www.cdc.gov/tobacco, based in Atlanta, offer a wealth of information on tobacco.
4/The St. Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal London School of Medicine in the U.K. http://www.mds.qmw.ac.uk/ have a lot of researches about smoking
5/U.S. Surgeon General's Panel Links Tobacco to Cancer, Other Diseases
Los Angeles Times
January 12, 1964
All I Want Is Your Money And Your Health
