Interesting Facts about Smoking
In recent years, smoking has become an acute global problem, and it is estimated that there are 1.2 billion smokers worldwide. Many people used to feel that cigarette smoking imparted machismo look to males and sexuality to females. The world has now awoken to all the hazardous effect of cigarette smoking, and it is now considered a bad habit which can cost smoker his or her health and life. Cigarettes are the single most traded item in the world, and more than one trillion cigarettes are sold each year.
Cigarettes contain nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, ammonia, and arsenic. Smoking a single cigarette reduces the life expectancy by 10.7 minutes, so a pack of 20 cigarettes shortens the life by more than three and half hours. Suicide, road accidents, AIDS, murder and drugs and solvents all kill, but smoking kills five times more people than all the other causes put together. Smoking increases the risks of lung and many other cancers, and U.S witnesses more than 400,000 smoking related illnesses and deaths each year.
Second hand smoking is also very dangerous to coworkers, family members and others who inhale the smoke. Most people take up the habit of smoking during their teens, and in addition to alcohol, wearing stilettos, using aftershave, sexual intercourse and drugs, cigarette smoking is seen as the right of passage towards adulthood. Though the sale of tobacco products is highly regulated with legal legislation, it is not illegal to smoke tobacco at any age. Due to smoking, an average smoker loses fourteen years of their life, however, it does not mean that the smokers will die young, and they can still live out a normal lifespan.
As per insurance companies, smoking just one cigarette reduces the life expectancy of the smoker by 10.7 minutes. There seems to be some correlation between country’s standard of living, income, level of education and the number of people who quit smoking. Almost 20% of the cigarette is sugar which most people are unaware of, and effects of burning sugar are also unknown. Tobacco reduces the flow of blood, and hence nicotine addiction has been linked to impotency.
Most smokers start the habit during their teen years, and perceive it as a right of passage towards adulthood. Tobacco and nicotine are very potent carcinogens responsible for majority of all cancers of trachea, lung, esophagus, larynx and bronchus, and are also blamed for many serious cardiovascular diseases. Several methods of production and several active ingredients are used in making sure that the nicotine in the cigarettes is much more potent than that of the tobacco plant. To add taste and flavor unique to any brand, toppings are added to the blended tobacco mix.