Quiting Guide To Make The Decision

This section provides information about smoking and helps you understand your own smoking habit. Even if you’re not thinking about quitting right now, it can be helpful to understand the reasons that you smoke and the effects that smoking has on you and your family. There are state-of-the-art self-assessment questionnaires on QuitNet that you can use to better understand your own personal smoking experience.

Health Risks of Smoking:

Cigarettes are one of the few consumer products that aren't regulated.

[1] So, in order to determine the chemical makeup of cigarettes, we rely on the Federal Trade Commission’s studies of tobacco smoke.

[2] More than 40 of the chemicals the FTC found in cigarette smoke cause cancer in humans. The most dangerous components of tobacco are described below.

Nicotine:

Nicotine is a drug produced naturally in tobacco leaves. It’s nicotine that hooks you to cigarettes. Studies have shown that nicotine can have as much power over your brain as heroin and cocaine. Nicotine gives your brain a quick sensation of pleasure and when it starts to wear off (usually within minutes after finishing a smoke) your brain starts wanting or craving more. Nicotine increases heart rate and blood pressure, and decreases circulation by constricting blood vessels- this makes nicotine a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Nicotine promotes peptic ulcers; releases hormones that affect the central nervous system; interferes with nerve-muscle communication; and is directly responsible for a host of other health risks related to sexual functioning, fertility, fetal development, miscarriages and neonatal deaths, and brain functioning. That’s why some Quitsters call it the Nicodemon.

Carbon Monoxide:

Cigarettes produce carbon monoxide, the same deadly odorless, colorless gas that comes out the tailpipe of your car or a faulty gas heater. In high enough concentrations it is deadly; in lower doses it causes shortness of breath and increased heart rate. Fortunately, the body is able to eliminate most of the carbon monoxide fairly quickly once you quit smoking. Most people who quit feel more energetic and less short of breath within just a few days of quitting.

Cyanide, Arsenic, and Other Nasty Stuff...

like Formaldehyde, Benzene, Radon, and the radioisotope Polonium 210. The Environmental Protection Agency could arrest you for putting these poisons into the ground, yet tobacco advertising urges you to breathe them! When you smoke, small amounts of these awful chemicals are spread around and stored in every tissue and cell in your body where they can speed up the growth of cancer cells and degenerative diseases.

Tar:

comes from the burning of cigarettes and is one of the main components of cigarette smoke. In a solid form, tar is a sticky brown substance that causes yellow-brown stains on fingers, teeth, clothes, and furniture. If you smoke in your car, try cleaning the inside windshield sometime. Imagine what all that tar must look like in your lungs.

Risks for smokeless tobacco users:

Chewing smokeless tobacco puts many of the same chemicals and poisons into your body. That’s why people who chew tobacco for many years are 50 times more likely to get oral cancer, gum disease and lose their teeth than people who do not chew. The risk of other cancers, heart disease, and ulcerative colitis is 50-70% higher among chewers.

About Secondhand Smoke:

Cigarette smoke hurts many more people than just the smoker. Children under the age of one whose parents smoke are more than 2 times as likely than children of nonsmokers to suffer asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, and other respiratory tract illnesses. A child’s lung tissue is especially vulnerable to damage, even when the concentration of secondhand smoke is relatively low.

This means that smoking in a car, even with the windows open, is still dangerous to a child. The younger the child, the more vulnerable the lung tissue.

Fertility and Sexual Potency:

Cigarette ads try to make smoking sexy, but the opposite is true. The fertility rates of smoking women are at least 30% lower than those of non-smokers, and these women are up to 3 times as likely to miscarry when they do become pregnant. The children of smoking mothers are at significantly higher risk of premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight, birth defects, and the development of childhood allergies and learning disabilities. The risk of impotence among smoking men is at least twice that of nonsmokers. Smoking also reduces sperm density and motility, which can increase the risk of infertility.

Wrinkles, discolored skin:

The models in the ads probably don’t smoke because many smokers in their 40s have facial wrinkles similar to those of nonsmokers in their 60s . Smokers are almost 5 times more likely to develop more, and deeper, wrinkles than are nonsmokers.