Cigarettes

Who Smokes?

*In the United States alone, more than 6,000 children and adolescents try their first cigarette each day.

*Each day, about 3,000 teenagers become regular smokers and nearly a third of them will die prematurely from a smoking-related disease.

*24% of high school students in Wisconsin smoke.

*6.6% of middle school students smoke.

*5.3 million packs of cigarettes are sold illegally to kids in Wisconsin each year.

*By the time they are high school seniors, 22 percent of adolescents smoke daily.

*88% of smokers started using tobacco before age 18. This means that if you stay smoke-free in high school, you will probably never smoke.

*Smokeless tobacco users are more likely than nonusers to become cigarette smokers.

*About 25% of Hispanics in Wisconsin smoke.

Chemicals

*There are over 4,000 chemicals in cigarettes. Among these chemicals are Acetone (nail polish remover), Acetic Acid (vinegar), Aluminum, Ammonia (toilet cleaner), Arsenic (poison), Butane (cigarette lighter fluid), Carbon Monoxide (car exhaust fumes), Copper, Formaldehyde (preserves dead bodies), Hydrogen Cyanide (gas chamber poison), Lead, Mercury, Methanol (rocket fuel), Napthalene (mothballs), and tar (streets).

*Low-tar nicotine cigarettes are NOT healthier than regular cigarettes.

*Nicotine is more addictive than cocaine or heroin.

Health Effects

*Tobacco is the only product that, when used exactly as it was intended, injures and kills.

*Each pack of cigarettes in the United States costs the economy $2.17 in health care expenditures.

*The United States spends more than $50 billion each year in direct medical expenditures from smoking.

*Every cigarette causes a smoker 5-7 minutes of their life.

*On average, someone who smokes a pack or more of cigarettes each day lives 6.6 years less than someone who never smokes regularly.

*7,800 people in Wisconsin die each year from smoking.

*Every day, more than 1,000 Americans die from smoking-related diseases, the equivalent of three jumbo jet crashes with no survivors.

*Every year, cigarettes kill more than 400,000 Americans, that’s 1 in 5 of all deaths.

*Each year, pack-a-day smokers smear the equivalent of one cup of tar over their respiratory tracts. Tobacco tar comes back up as bad breath every time smokers exhale.

*Female smokers have an unusually high rate of infertility. Male smokers suffer decreased sperm count and have a more difficult time maintaining erections.

*Every puff exposes smokers to gases that irritate the eyes, nose, throat, and gums. Continued smoking spurs a thickening of the throat lining, eventually leading to throat cancer. Smokers are also at increased risk of gum disease and tooth loss.

*As in the throat, the body thickens the bronchial lining, trying to protect it from smoke. The process eventually causes lung cancer. Smoking progressively impairs the lungs’ ability to oxygenate the blood, leading to emphysema.

*Smoking increases the heart rate by 10-25 beats per minute, or up to 36,000 beats a day. Smokers have a greater risk of irregular heartbeats (arrhythmias), which increases the risk of heart attack. Smoking also constricts blood vessels, triggering blood pressure increases of 10-15% - a key risk factor for both heart attack and stroke.

*Smoking-related narrowing of the blood vessels causes peripheral vascular disease, a condition almost exclusively confined to smokers, who may suffer amputation of the arms or legs as a result.

*It takes as little as five years of smoking to have it hit you in he face. Smoking narrows the blood vessels, notably the capillaries of the face, decreasing the flow of oxygen and nutrients to facial skin cells. The result is premature facial wrinkling, with deep crow’s feet radiating from the corners of the eyes, and pale, gray, wrinkled skin on the cheeks.

*Tobacco kills more people than AIDS, murder, alcohol abuse and drunk driving combined.

Secondhand Smoke

*Smokers inhale about 15% of the smoke from a cigarette. The rest goes into the air.

*Secondhand smoke causes 30 times as many lung cancer deaths as all regulated pollutants combined.

*Secondhand smoke kills about 3,000 nonsmokers each year from lung cancer.

*Secondhand smoke is linked to 35,000 heart attacks each year in nonsmokers.

*Over 700,000 kids are exposed to second hand smoke at home each year.

*Infants are three times more likely to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome if their mothers smoke during pregnancy.

*Children exposed to secondhand smoke have high rates of colds, bronchitis, and pneumonia. Secondhand smoke aggravates nonsmokers’ respiratory conditions, particularly asthma.

*Secondhand smoke ruins the taste and smell of food.

*Smoke-filled rooms can have up to six times the pollution of a crowded highway.

*Opening windows isn’t enough. It can take three hours for smoke to clear from a room.

Quitting Smoking

*70% of teenage smokers wish they had never started smoking in the first place.

*About 3 out of every four adolescent smokers have made an attempt to quit smoking and have failed.

*It takes an average of 5-7 times before someone can successfully quit smoking.

*Of daily adolescent smokers who think that they will not smoke in 5 years, nearly 75% are still smoking 5-6 years later.

*Someone who smokes 1 pack of cigarettes each day for a year could save $1,900 each year by not smoking.

*Within days of quitting, a smoker’s sense of taste and smell returns to normal.

* Five to ten years after quitting, a smoker’s risk of heart disease and lung cancer returns to that of a nonsmoker.

Smokeless Tobacco

Chemicals

*Smokeless “Spit” tobacco contains over 2,000 chemicals including Polonium 210 (nuclear waste), Formaldehyde, Nicotine, Arsenic, and Lead.

*Some of the ingredients in spit tobacco include polonium 210 (nuclear waste), formaldehyde, nicotine, cadmium (used in car batteries), arsenic, and lead (nerve poison).

*The nicotine in smokeless tobacco is as addicting as the nicotine in cigarettes.

Health Effects

*Many young people think smokeless tobacco is safer than smoking cigarettes. But, since you hold the tobacco in your mouth for minutes at a time, more harmful chemicals can enter your body than when you smoke.

*Spit tobacco is and addictive and causes mouth cancer and gum and tooth problems.

*Studies have found that 60-78% of smokeless tobacco users have oral lesions.

Tobacco Corporations

*The Tobacco industry needs 2.2 million new smokers each year to stay in business.

*The industry claims that there is still a controversy about health effects and that it isn’t addictive.

*In 1965, the Surgeon General required warnings. The industry has not, as a result ever lost a product liability case.

*Tobacco companies are making $200 million a year by selling to and addicting a new generation of customers – children.

*The tobacco industry spends more than $6 billion each year – that’s $16 million each day or $11,000 a minute – on advertising and special promotions.

*Tobacco companies put ads in magazines and in convenience stores to attract new, young smokers.

*Tobacco companies use good-looking models to make smoking look fun and exciting.