Smoking as little as one cigarette a day can damage your health, according to the American Cancer Society. Moreover, a long-term habit can cause premature death from several diseases. The best way to avoid tobacco-related health problems is to never start smoking, or to quit if you already have.
Significance
Smoking is the most preventable cause of death and disease in the United States, according to the Cleveland Clinic and numerous health organizations. The habit contributes to 18 percent of the deaths in the country each year, largely because it is a leading cause of such serious medical conditions as atherosclerosis, heart attack, high blood pressure, lung cancer and stroke. Smoking tobacco can also harm people around smokers who do not smoke, as well as the children of mothers who smoked while they were pregnant.
Features
Cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, including more than 40 chemicals that cause cancer, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Poisonous substances found in cigarette smoke include ammonia, arsenic, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide and tar. Cigarettes smoke also contains nicotine, an addictive chemical responsible for the fleeting pleasurable feelings that encourage people to continue smoking. The enjoyable effects of nicotine disappear within minutes, leading to increasingly worse withdrawal symptoms that also encourage smokers to smoke more in order to avoid the negative effect of not smoking. Withdrawal from nicotine can cause problems such as difficulty sleeping, headaches and nervousness.
Alternative Cigarettes
Despite persistent marketing tactics from cigarette manufacturers, safe or safer cigarettes do not exist, according to the American Cancer Society. Alternatives to conventional cigarettes such as light, menthol, herbal and all-natural varieties pose a serious danger to your health, and they can cause the same medical problems as traditional cigarettes. In some cases, alternative cigarettes can pose a higher risk than conventional cigarettes, such as the risks posed by menthol-flavored cigarettes. Such products cool the throat and reduce coughing and throat dryness, which causes smokers to hold smoke in longer, inhale smoke deeper, attempt quitting smoking less often and fail more often at quitting smoking.
Cigars and Pipes
The same safety misconceptions are true of other tobacco products intended for smoking, such as cigars and tobacco used in smoking pipes, which some people incorrectly believe are safer than cigarettes. For example, the American Cancer Society notes that cigars contains most of the cancer-causing chemicals that cigarettes do, and a single large cigar can contain tobacco equivalent to the amount in a whole pack of cigarettes. Although cigar smokers are less likely to die from lung cancer than cigarette smokers, smoking cigars and tobacco in pipes increases the likelihood of dying from several smoking-related medical conditions such as heart disease and various cancers.
Young Smokers
Roughly 25 percent of U.S. high school students smoked cigarettes as of 2010, according to MedlinePlus, and about 14 percent smoked cigars in 2007, reports the American Cancer Society. Approximately one-third of young smokers will never stop smoking, which will lead to developing a smoking-related medical condition and premature death.
