The Effects of Smoking

Smoking
It is very easy to get hooked. The nicotine in cigarettes is an extremely powerful and addictive drug. If you have started already… give up now before it is too late.

What are the effects?
When you inhale the smoke from a cigarette, the nicotine hits your brain in about 8 seconds. Nicotine speeds up the heart rate and increases blood pressure. Smoking makes your clothes smell, your teeth yellow and your fingers brown – just imagine what it is doing to your lungs.

What are the risks?
Cigarettes give you cancer. If you have got 25 friends who smoke, 12 of them will die early from lung cancer or a smoking related illness.
The smoke from cigarettes contains over 400 chemicals, many of them harmful to your health.

Cigarette smoke makes your blood thick and sticky while the carbon monoxide reduces the amount of oxygen it can carry.

Smoking causes cancer of the bladder, kidney and pancreas and women who smoke are more likely to develop cancer of the cervix.

Five good reasons not to smoke:

>The environment – trees are cut down to dry tobacco leaves. The average smoker gets through one tree per fortnights tobacco.

> Third world exploitation – high tar, high nicotine tobacco is dumped in poor countries.

> Litter – more than 30% of street litter is caused by cigarette ends, packets and cellophane.

> Money – 20 a day can cost nearly £1500 a year.

> Your health – every year in the UK 12,000 people die prematurely from smoking related diseases.

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