Cigarettes kill!

Smoking is not sexy.  It give you bad breath, hurts non-smokers in the same room, and costs too much.  Your gums will be more vulnerable to gingivitis, and you will have to have teeth pulled.  Definitely not sexy.  Not only that, but you can also get cancer and other horrible things from smoking.

If you don’t believe me, if you don’t think cigarettes are harmful to your body, then read this excerpt from Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org):

Since the 1920s, scientists and doctors have been able to link smoking with respiratory illness.^[1] Researchers have identified negative health effects from smoking cigarettes such as cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, and other health problems relating to nearly every organ of the body.

Nicotine, the psychoactive drug in tobacco, makes cigarettes highly addictive. About half of cigarette smokers die of tobacco-related disease and lose on average 14 years of life.^[2] Every year, tobacco cigarettes kill more than 8 million people worldwide; with 1.2 million of those being non-smokers dying as the result of exposure to second-hand smoke.^[3] Second-hand smoke from cigarettes causes many of the same health problems as smoking, including cancer, which has led to legislation and policy that has prohibited smoking in many workplaces and public areas.

Cigarette smoke contains over 7,000 chemical compounds, including arsenic, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, lead, carbon monoxide, acrolein, and other poisonous substances.^[4] Over 70 of these are carcinogenic.^[5] Most modern cigarettes are filtered, although this does not make the smoke inhaled from them contain fewer carcinogens and harmful chemicals. Cigarette use by pregnant women has also been shown to cause birth defects, including low birth weight, fetal abnormalities, and premature birth.^[6] Smoking rates have generally declined in the developed world, but continue to rise in some developing nations.

I quit smoking in January 2006.  My boyfriend said he would quit in a few years.  He did not. And now he carries something that breathes for him every day all day long.  Don’t wait until you lose your teeth (and you will if you keep smoking), or have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, and other health problems or lung cancer to quit.

If you want to stop smoking or help someone who still smokes, consider reading my blog post article about My Final Quit: How I quit smoking and broke a 40-year addiction.  (The link for that article is below.)

When I first moved to Arkansas and saw all the tobacco stores, I bought ten of those books from Amazon and gave them to smokers that I met at various public places, like the gas station. When I asked them if they wanted to quit, if they said “Yes!”, then I asked if they would read a book about how to quit.  If they said “Yes” to reading, then I gave them a book and asked them to pass it on to another smoker when they were done. I can’t afford to do that again.  Please go here to learn about my book: https://skatingthru2012.com/2021/09/25/stop-smoking/.

Till next time,

Please be kind to everyone you meet, for we all have our hidden sorrows. ~Tzaddi (aka Dr. Young, Ph.D.)