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Disease and Addiction
Tobacco Related Illness: The Human Tragedies
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), tobacco is the most important cause of heart disease, cancer, emphysema and stroke -- the top four causes of death in the US. In fact, cigarette smoking and general tobacco use cause more annual deaths than AIDS, alcohol, highway accidents, murders, suicides, illegal drugs and fires combined. Smoking is the number one cause of preventable death in the United States and the rest of the industrialized world. Consider this:
 400,000 Americans die prematurely each year from illnesses related to primary tobacco use.
Over 50,000 non-smokers die each year from exposure to "second-hand" smoke.
Those who die of tobacco-related illnesses lose on average 13 years of their lives. 3
Lung Cancer
Lung cancer, which claims 146,000 lives each year, could virtually be wiped out if smoking was eliminated. The CDC says men who smoke are 22 times more likely to die from lung cancer than non-smokers. Female smokers are 12 times more likely to die from the disease. What’s even more disheartening is that only 13% of lung cancer patients live five years beyond their initial diagnosis. Many people do not realize that because of the rise in smoking among women, many more women die from lung cancer than breast cancer. 2
Smoking Injures Children
Children who live in households where others smoke have significantly more frequent upper respiratory infections and other breathing problems
Infants born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy have substantially greater risk of prematurity, intrauterine growth retardation, low birth weight and sudden infant death syndrome.
Most pediatricians believe that smoking around an infant or a child is a form of child abuse.5
 Addiction is the Issue
Not a "Voluntary" Choice
Given all the risks associated with smoking and tobacco use, one might think a logical person would just quit. However, logic does not apply to a situation where addiction is the primary reason people continue to light up. 70% of current smokers say they would like to quit. 50% have made at minimum a 24-hour quit attempt in the last year. Nicotine is an addictive drug that imprisons its victims the same ways that drugs such as heroin, alcohol and cocaine do. Five Stages of Nicotine & Tobacco Addiction
Preparation: When a child forms a knowledge base about smoking and develops beliefs and expectations about use.
Initiation: The first two or three cigarettes tried during adolescence. These usually produce adverse effects such as nausea, coughing and dizziness. Often peer pressure and role model emulation propel youths past this unpleasantness until tolerance develops.
Experimentation: The repeated, albeit irregular, use over an extended period of time, usually in a social context
Consolidation: Regular smoking depending on context, such as parties, weekends, with alcohol or in smoking circles.
Addiction: Daily use of cigarettes with an internally regulated need for a certain nicotine level |
Tougher than Heroin
Though they denied this truth for decades, even tobacco industry officials now publicly admit that nicotine is addictive. Once a young person is hooked, it is incredibly difficult to stop. Less than five percent of smokers who try to quit cold turkey will still be “clean” at the end of one year, and most people will have to make at least seven attempts before they successfully quit. Even with the best treatments available only about 25% those who try will successfully kick the habit. Compared to heroin and alcohol users in treatment, those attempting to quit nicotine have a much higher relapse rate. Only crack cocaine rivals nicotine in its ability to hold users in its grip. Many, if not most, smokers eventually do quit, but unfortunately their motivation is often a life-threatening experience with cancer, heart disease, stroke or emphysema.
Nicotine Changes Brains
What happens when smokers try to stop? In any addiction, a person takes in increasing levels of the drug until the brain physically changes to adapt to these new chemical conditions and becomes dependent on the substance for normal functions. When a person stops or reduces their nicotine intake, brain functions become disturbed, resulting in often incapacitating withdrawal symptoms including restlessness, overeating, anxiety, irritability, depression, fatigue, headache, heart palpitations and, of course, the craving for more cigarettes. Most withdrawal effects diminish after several weeks or months, however habituation and craving may persist for years, sometimes decades. 6
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