Despite massive awareness campaigns from organizations like TheTruth.com over the past several decades, tobacco use is still responsible for nearly one in five deaths in the United States each year, or about 480,000, according to the U.S. Surgeon General Report, 2014. Not surprisingly, lung cancer, which is the cause of death most associated with tobacco use, is also the most preventable form of cancer deaths in the world.
These campaigns can be effective, however. The CDC announced in 2014 that, according to their latest reports, only about 18 percent, or 42 million American adults were current cigarette smokers, which is, according to the organization, the lowest rate of tobacco use since researchers began tracking the habit in 1965. Only about 8 percent of teens now smoke, which is down from 23 percent in 2000, according to TheTruth.com.
Why Smoking Kills: A Brief History and Understanding
Cultivated tobacco that’s available in modern cigarettes is not the same as the wild tobacco that the Europeans began farming in the 1500s. Even then, King James is quoted as saying, “Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”
The tobacco industry, in the centuries after John Rolfe planted the first commercial tobacco crop in Virginia in 1612, has hybridized and engineered the product found in cigarettes and cigars to deliver maximum amounts of the addictive compound, nicotine, as well as more than 7,000 chemicals that are released into the mouth, airway and lungs. Of these, more than 70 are known carcinogens.
Every time you inhale cigarette smoke, you’re breathing in chemicals like arsenic, formaldehyde, vinyl chloride, hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, cadmium, chromium and carbon monoxide.
According to a Wired magazine article, it doesn’t stop there. On the FDA list of compounds in cigarette smoke is polonium-210 and two isotopes of uranium, all radioactive elements that vary from cigarette to cigarette, depending on the soil where the crop was grown. These compounds can build up in the lungs over time, making cigarette smoking one of the most common causes of radiation exposure in the world. This exposure may be related to our risk of developing lung and other cancers over time.
Smoking And Cancer: It’s More Than Just Your Lungs
While lung cancer is the leading and most readily identified cancer linked to smoking, it’s far from the only type of cancer you’re at risk for. Smokers have an increased risk of a wide range of cancers, according to Cancer.org, including:
● Mouth cancer
● Lip, nose, and sinus cancer
● Larynx (voice box) cancer
● Pharynx (throat) cancer
● Esophageal cancer
● Stomach cancer
● Pancreatic cancer
● Kidney cancer
● Liver cancer
● Bladder cancer
● Uterine and cervical cancer
● Colorectal cancers
● Ovarian cancer
● Acute myeloid leukemia
Save Your Heart
If you ask the average person what the greatest risk associated with smoking is, they will probably answer cancer – or more specifically, lung cancer. Despite the wide range of cancers that smoking puts you at risk of developing, cancer is not even the greatest risk associated with this habit: It’s cardiovascular disease.
The CDC, according to WhyQuit.com, attributes about one-quarter of smoking deaths to lung cancer. However, more than 40 percent of smoking deaths are the result of cardiovascular disease – and most of these deaths are the result of heart disease and strokes.
Smoking damages the heart muscle and blood vessels, causing them to thicken and narrow. The chemicals inhaled during smoking trigger the body’s fight-or-flight response – which causes the heart to beat faster and blood pressure to increase. While the body has an excellent response when faced with a life-or-death situation, those situations are meant to come few and far between – rather than 20 times daily, as in the case of a pack-a-day smoker. This regular revving of the body’s internal engine causes severe wear and tear on the heart muscle and blood vessels.
Smoking also can cause blood clots to form in the body, which can lodge in the lungs or elsewhere, blocking blood flow to the brain, resulting in a stroke.
It Doesn’t Just Affect You
Smokers often argue that they aren’t hurting anyone but themselves when confronted with the dangers of their habit, and this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Of the 480,000 Americans who die each year as a result of tobacco use, more than 41,000 of these deaths are attributed to exposure to secondhand smoke – in other words, nearly 3,500 Americans die each month because they were chronically exposed to the habit of a loved one.
Smoking costs Americans more than $300 billion annually. Of that, about $170 billion is in direct healthcare costs and more than $156 billion in lost productivity, according to the CDC’s fact sheet on smoking among U.S. adults.
The cost isn’t just financial. According to a 2013 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, smoking takes at least 10 years off of a smoker’s life expectancy. That’s 10 years of family milestones, birthdays, vacations and memories. The good news, according to the report, is that those people who kick the habit before the age of 40 were able to reduce their excess risk of death as a result of the habit by 90 percent.
The facts are undeniable, and the message is clear: Quitting smoking now can greatly increase your health and quality of life now and give you an extra decade of life to enjoy later. There are countless organizations that are dedicated to helping Americans kick the habits, including state and federal organizations, as well as non-profits. If you smoke, find out today how you can quit. It’ll be the best decision you make for yourself and for your family.