Are you a Smoker?

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Personally, I dont care if you want to kill yourself, but dont endanger those around you! Go for it NYC; Us non-smokers are with you 100%. By smoking, you can cause health problems not only for yourself but also for  those around you.

Hurting Yourself

Smoking is an addiction. Tobacco contains nicotine, a drug that  is addictive. The nicotine, therefore, makes it very difficult (although not  impossible) to quit. In fact, since the U.S. Surgeon General’s 1964 report on  the dangers of smoking, millions of Americans have quit. Still, approximately  440,000 deaths occur in the U.S. each year from smoking-related illnesses; this  represents almost 1 out of every 5 deaths. The  reason for these deaths is that smoking greatly increases the risk of getting lung cancer, heart attack, chronic lung disease, stroke, and many other cancers.  Moreover, smoking is perhaps the most preventable cause of breathing (respiratory) diseases within  the USA.

Hurting Others

Smoking harms not just the smoker, but also family  members, coworkers, and  others who breathe the smoker’s cigarette smoke, called secondhand smoke or  passive smoke. Among infants up to 18 months of age, secondhand smoke is  associated with as many as 300,000 cases of chronic bronchitis and pneumonia each year.  In addition, secondhand smoke from a parent’s cigarette increases a child’s  chances for middle ear problems, causes coughing and wheezing, worsens asthma, and increases an infant’s risk of dying from sudden infant death  syndrome (SIDS).

Smoking is also harmful to the unborn fetus.  If a pregnant woman smokes, her fetus is at an increased risk of miscarriage, early delivery (prematurity), stillbirth, infant death, and low birth weight. In fact, it has been estimated that if all women quit smoking during pregnancy, about 4,000 new babies would not die each year.

Exposure to passive smoke can also cause cancer. Research has shown that  non-smokers who reside with a smoker have a 24% increase in risk for developing  lung cancer when compared with other non-smokers. An estimated 3,000 lung cancer  deaths occur each year in the U.S. that are attributable to passive smoking.  Secondhand smoke also increases the risk of stroke and heart disease. If both  parents smoke, a teenager is more than twice as likely to smoke as a teenager  whose parents are both nonsmokers. Even in households where only one parent  smokes, young people are more likely to start smoking

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