SMOKING AND ITS EFFECTS.
WARNING: There is no safe tobacco product. The use of any tobacco product-including cigarettes, pipes, cigars, and spit tobacco; mentholated, "low tar," "naturally grown," or "additive free"-can cause cancer and other adverse health effects.
Surgeon General.
To smoke cigarettes after seeing this critical warning is to walk knowingly in the direction of ones own death. Cigarette smoke contains over 4000 chemical compounds. The most malignant of these compounds is nicotine, which, despite some reported positive effects such as elevation of mood, is much more harmful than helpful. Nicotine increases the risk of heart diseases and stroke besides leading to a host of other life threatening diseases. Countless scientific studies have confirmed the dangers of cigarette smoking. .
Cigarette smoke is known to cause many types of cancers including lung and mouth cancer. Cigarette smoking in pregnancy causes damage to the unborn fetus and can cause premature or still birth. It also causes hardening of the arteries and narrowing of the blood vessels, obstructing the flow of blood. Cigarette smoking causes a wide range of lung diseases including chronic bronchitis, emphysema, cough, shrinking of the breathing passages causing breathing difficulties and swelling of the lungs. Insufficient intake of oxygen due to cigarette smoking causes heavy strain on the lungs. Another .
reported finding is that smoking triggers asthma and is the leading factor for decreased lung function.
Research shows that more people die from tobacco related diseases than from AIDS, alcohol, drugs, fires, homicide, motor vehicle accidents and suicide combined. Particularly astounding is the fact that more than three million young people under the age of eighteen smoke half of billion cigarettes each year and that more than one half of them consider themselves dependent upon cigarettes.