Tobacco use kills 5.4 million people a year worldwide - an
average of one person every six seconds - and accounts for one in
10 adult deaths worldwide. It kills up to half of all users. Most
of tobacco's damage to health does not become evident until years
or even decades after the onset of use. So, while tobacco use is
rising globally, the epidemic of tobacco-related disease and death
has yet to reach its peak.
In Singapore:
Smoking is the largest cause of preventable death in the world.
Don't let yourself or your family become the next victim.
No. All cigarettes can damage the human body. Any smoking is
dangerous. The cigarette is the only legal product whose advertised
and intended use - smoking - is known to harm the body and cause
cancer.
Some people think that switching from high-tar and high-nicotine
cigarettes to those with low tar and nicotine makes smoking safer,
but this is not true. When people switch to brands with lower tar
and nicotine, they often end up smoking more cigarettes, or more of
each cigarette, to get the same nicotine dose as before.
Smokers have been led to believe that "light" cigarettes have
lower health risk and are a good option to quitting. A low-tar
cigarette can be just as harmful as a high-tar cigarette because a
person often takes deeper puffs, puffs more often, or smokes them
to a shorter butt length.
Menthol only adds to the flavour of the cigarettes. It does not
make the cigarettes any less dangerous.
In fact, menthol cigarettes may even be more dangerous. The
added menthol produces a cooling sensation in the throat when the
smoke is inhaled. It also decreases the cough reflex and covers the
dry feeling in the throat that smokers often have. People who smoke
menthol cigarettes can inhale deeper and hold the smoke in
longer.
Yes. The nicotine in cigarette smoke causes an addiction to
smoking. Nicotine is an addictive drug just like heroin and
cocaine.
Not everyone will get these withdrawal symptoms but don't lose
heart if you do. They will disappear in one or two weeks and they
are actually signs that you are getting better.
Yes.
In large doses, nicotine is a poison and can kill by stopping a
person's breathing muscles.
Smokers usually become dependent on nicotine and suffer physical
and emotional (psychological) withdrawal symptoms when they stop
smoking. These symptoms include irritability, nervousness,
headaches and trouble sleeping. The true marker for addiction,
though, is that people still smoke even though they know smoking is
bad for them -- affecting their lives, their health and their
families and friends in unhealthy ways.
Anyone who starts smoking is at risk of becoming addicted to
nicotine. Studies show that cigarette smoking is most likely to
become a habit during the teenage years. The younger a person is
when he or she begins to smoke, the more likely he or she is to
become addicted to nicotine.
Cigarette smoke contains chemicals that irritate the air
passages and lungs. When a smoker inhales these substances, the
body tries to protect itself by making mucus and coughing. The
early morning smoker's cough happens for many reasons. Normally,
tiny hair-like formations (called cilia) beat outward and sweep
harmful material out of the lungs. Cigarette smoke slows the
sweeping action, so some of the poisons in the smoke stay in the
lungs, and mucus stays in the airways. While a smoker sleeps, some
cilia recover and begin working again. After waking up, the smoker
coughs because the lungs are trying to clear away the irritants and
mucus built up the day before. The cilia will completely stop
working after they have been exposed to smoke for a long time. When
this happens, the smoker's lungs are even more exposed and prone to
infection and irritation.
The same noxious chemicals that cause the simple smoker's cough
can lead to far more serious conditions such as bronchitis,
emphysema, pneumonia and lung cancer.
Your lungs start to function properly again and are working to
clear tar, dead cells and extra mucus accumulated from the
cigarettes.
Smoking causes a build-up of fatty deposits in the blood
vessels, resulting in narrowing and blockage of the vessels. If the
blood supply in these vessels leading to the brain is blocked, the
surrounding brain cells will die, resulting in a stroke.
The moment you light a cigarette, thousands of poisonous
chemicals in the cigarette smoke enter your body and are absorbed
into the bloodstream. Some of these chemicals make your blood
vessel walls sticky, damaging them, and causing them to collect the
tiny fatty deposits that float in the bloodstream. The more you
smoke, the more the fatty deposits build up.
Yes. Similar adverse effects take place when the blood vessels
leading to our heart are blocked by fatty deposits. This cuts off
the blood supply to our heart muscles, killing the tissue. As a
result, a heart attack occurs.
Lung cancer can begin from cell damage caused by smoking just
ONE cigarette.
Research has found that one of the cancer-causing substances in
cigarette smoke (benzopyrene) directly attacks and damages the p53
gene which blocks cancer and prevents cancer cells from growing.
When cancer threatens a lung cell with a damaged p53 gene, a deadly
tumour starts to grow.
Yes. It is never too late to quit smoking. The sooner you quit,
the more you can reduce your chances of getting cancer and other
diseases. Within minutes of smoking the last cigarette, your body
begins to restore itself.
Smoking begins to cause damage right away and is highly
addictive. Some studies have found nicotine to be as addictive as
heroin or cocaine.
Cigarette filters may trap part of the tar and nicotine, but
they do not remove any poisons from the cigarette smoke.