Twenty percent of people worldwide smoke tobacco products, often in the form of cigarettes. Tobacco comes from the leaf of the tobacco plant, and contains an extremely addictive chemical called nicotine. It is easy to start smoking tobacco, and difficult to stop, although there are many benefits of quitting. Your health, the health of others, and the actual price of the habit are all significant reasons to stop smoking tobacco.
Your Health
If you are a smoker, quitting is the best way for you to improve your health. As soon as you quit smoking, your risks of developing many dangerous diseases starts to decrease, and your breathing and blood pressure improve. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), smoking is responsible for nearly one of our every five deaths in the United States. Smoking tobacco has been proven to cause many types of cancers, including cancer of the pancreas, bladder, throat, voice box, stomach, esophagus, mouth, uterus, and cervix. It also accounts for approximately 85 percent of lung cancer deaths, the CDC adds.
Not only does smoking cause cancer, it also causes heart and respiratory diseases. Smoking increases your risk of having a stroke or a heart attack by narrowing and obstructing your blood vessels, raising your blood pressure and causing coronary heart disease, which, the CDC notes, is the leading cause of death in the U.S. Smoking causes many other diseases that impair your breathing, including emphysema, bronchitis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Others' Health
Not only are you affecting your own health when you smoke, you are affecting the health of others as well. Improving the health of people around you is another reason you stop smoking tobacco. Secondhand smoke is a term for the tobacco smoke released into the environment when you exhale smoke, or when it is released off the end of a lit cigarette. This secondhand smoke is extraordinarily dangerous to others, particularly children, who have a higher breathing rate than adults.
Women who smoke while pregnant run the risk of delivering a stillborn child, a premature baby, or a baby who does not weigh enough, according to the New York State Smokers’ Quitline. Children whose parents who smoke while they are growing up have higher rates of ear infections and other breathing illnesses including asthma, pneumonia, and bronchitis.
Your Wallet
If your own health and the health of your loved ones are not reasons enough to quit smoking, consider the amount of money you spend on tobacco. If you smoke a pack of cigarettes per day, you’ll spend over $1,600 in one year by buying them at the average 2010 price of $4.50, the American Cancer Society calculates. Even if you only buy one pack per week, you are still spending more than $200 a year. When you calculate the cost of smoking tobacco, you not only have to add in the cost of cigarettes, you should also consider medical and insurance bills you might have to pay if you develop any diseases — which is more likely if you smoke. Some insurance providers even charge smokers higher premiums, because they know smokers require more medical care. Think of all of the ways you’d rather spend that money.
