FAQ on Smoking and Health (Part I)




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1. Can smoking be safe?

No. Smoking any type of tobacco products, at any rate, damages the human body. Smoking even a few cigarettes a day, or several cigars a week, is dangerous for your health. Tobacco is particularly harmful for the lungs, heart, skin, reproductive organs, and teeth. Smoking is a leading cause of lung cancer and directly involved in the development of other malignancies.

Trying to smoke fewer cigarettes, or choosing tobacco products with less amount of nicotine and tar, does not really make smoking safer. In practice, cutting down on the amount of daily cigarettes often does not work. As to switching to “lighter” brands, smokers usually compensate by smoking more, thus inhaling the same amount of tar and nicotine as before, when they were smoking stronger cigarettes. Low-tar tobacco products inflict the same damage upon the smoker’s heath as high-tar “lung rockets”, especially if the smoker takes deep puffs. Even without these compensatory changes, it is much better for your health to quit smoking completely than to try to cut down or select lighter types of cigarettes.

2. How addictive are cigarettes?

Cigarettes, as well as other smoking and smokeless tobacco products, are extremely addictive. Tobacco addiction is caused by nicotine, which is contained in generous amounts in cigarette smoke. When consumed in small doses, nicotine ignites the feelings of pleasure and relaxation, but bigger doses can produce agitation, nausea, and dizziness. In time, and sometimes already after the first smoked cigarette, nicotine addiction is developed, which leads to a host of unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when the smoker tries to abstain from consuming tobacco. These symptoms are both psychological and physical and can include moodiness, nervousness, dry mouth, headaches, difficulty concentrating, irritability, and even a full-blown depression. In addition, nicotine influences the brain chemistry, which can negatively affect the smoker’s temper by creating mood swings and triggering mental disorders.

3. Who can become addicted to smoking?

Anybody who smokes is a tobacco addict. Numerous research show that, once started, smoking becomes a deeply rooted habit and quickly leads to a real addiction. Especially vulnerable are those who start smoking during adolescence.

4. What is nicotine and how does it affect our health?

Nicotine is a poisonous chemical substance contained in tobacco smoke. Taken in large amounts, it can paralyze the muscles involved in breathing, causing suffocation and death. Smoking produces relatively small amounts of nicotine, which are immediately metabolised and removed from the body, this is why smokers do not die from their habit right away. However, residual nicotine has an ability to concentrate in certain tissues and cause irreversible genetic damage. It harms the lungs, cardiovascular system, and other organs and systems of the body, thus elevating the smokers’ risk of developing lung cancer, impotence, stroke, heart attack, and circulatory diseases.

5. Is smoking really responsible for different cancers?

Yes, it is. In addition to nicotine, cigarette smoke contains more than 40 carcinogenic chemicals, which are involved in the development of different types of cancer. Tobacco-induced cancers account for about 1/3 of all cancers currently diagnosed in the United States. In more than 80 percent of all cases, lung cancer is caused entirely by smoking. Tobacco smoke is also a key trigger of pancreatic, oesophageal, kidney, mouth, and uterine cervical cancers.

6. Is smoking bad for the lungs?

Apart from lung cancer, cigarette smoking can cause a number of other lung diseases, the most common of which is chronic bronchitis. Another dangerous smoking-induced disorder of the lungs, emphysema, causes a graduate deterioration in the breathing mechanism and can lead to death. COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a collective term to describe chronic cases of emphysema and bronchitis, is mostly smoking-related. Annually, smoking-induced CORD kills more than 65,000 people!

Composed by staff writers

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Posted on March 12, 2008 
Filed Under Facts on Smoking, Smoking and Health, Stop Smoking

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