Smoking Risks

7 Pages 1793 Words

sease in the United States. What makes it so hard to quit?? Well, many researchers consider nicotine to be the most physically addictive of all the psychoactive drugs including crack cocaine and heroin. Three out of four smokers want to quit but they cannot and 75% of smokers say they wish they never started. Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide, the deadly gas found in automobile exhaust, in concentrations 400 times greater than is considered safe in industrial workplaces. Carbon monoxide is the deadly gas that you always hear of people dying from in houses. What it does is that it binds to the hemoglobin in your blood at a rate10 times faster and easier than oxygen does, making it impossible for your blood to transport oxygen to your organs and tissues. Also substances in tobacco damage the lining of the respiratory tract and decrease the lungs ability to fight off infection. According to the CDC, smoking triples the risk of dying from heart disease among middle-aged men and women. The American Cancer Society's findings indicate that by the age of eighty five, only 5 percent of lifetime smokers are still alive, as compared with 37 percent of those who never smoked. In addition, smokers at age thirty can expect to live an averag...