Smoking Risks

7 Pages 1793 Words

Smoking; facts, risks, and ways to quit.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were a little over 300,000 deaths related to AIDS in 1997. That's like taking half the people in Baltimore county and making them disappear. Another 75,000 died from alcohol. In addition to that, 20,000 died from illegal drug use, and 25,000 died from motor vehicle crashes. But if you were to add those numbers up, they still wouldn't equal the amount of deaths that were related to tobacco. In fact, each year, smoking kills more people than AIDS, alcohol, drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides and fires combined. Tobacco is a concern not only for the person that is smoking, but it also effects the population that is not a tobacco user by increasing medical costs and taxes, and increases the mortality rate with second hand smoke.
According to the United States Public Health Service, there are approximately 54 million Americans that smoke each year. The use of tobacco has easily become number one cause of death and concern in the United States. Smoking is directly linked to bronchitis; emphysema; coronary heart disease; cirrhoses of the liver; peripheral vascular disease; bladder cancer; peptic ulcers; lung cancer; larynx cancer; lip, tongue, and gum cancers; tobacco amblyopia; adverse drug reactions tachycardia, increased blood pressure, decreased exercise tolerance, coronary vasoconstriction, elevated blood carboxyhemoglobin concentration, and increased tendency to thrombosis. In addition, 14 percent of all premature deliveries may be due to maternal smoking and 87 percent of all lung cancer cases are due to tobacco. Also, The CDC says people who smoke increase their risk of death from bronchitis and emphysema by nearly 10 times. The CDC calls it the number one preventable cause of pre mature death in the US. and the Surgeon General has called it the most important of the known modifiable risk factors for coronary heart di...