Smoking is a global problem. It is estimated that one in three adults smoke, with over 1.2 billion people smoking worldwide. More than 105 billion cigarettes are sold every week — that’s ten million per minute. And, as stated by Dr. Max Snyder in his documentary The Medical Aspects of Tobacco, “Cigarettes are the only substance sold that, when the user follows the instructions carefully, will result in the consumer becoming toxic, chronically ill or !”
There is no controversy about the facts. Thousands of careful studies have documented them. No major medical or health agency questions them: Cigarette smoking is a destructive habit.
* Cigarette smoking has been identified as the most important source of preventable morbidity and premature mortality in the United States and the world.
* Smoking-related diseases cause an estimated 440,000 American deaths each year.
* Women account for 39 percent of all smoking deaths.
* Smoking costs the United States over $150 billion annually in health care costs.
* A 2004 Study by the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion found that cigarette smoke contains over 4,800 chemicals, 69 of which are known to cause cancer.
* Kentucky is the nation’s leading tobacco grower.
* The biggest percentage of the world’s tobacco is grown in China.
* Large amounts of nicotine was once given to elephants in order to put them to sleep via animal dart guns.
* The Centers for Disease Control’s list of the World’s Most addictive substances places is at the top of the list.
* Heroin placed 5th.
* Forbidden to advertise on television, cigarette companies rent huge signs in sport stadiums.
* Humphrey Bogart, seen smoking in Casablanca, smoked heavily in real life as well. He died of lung cancer at the age of 57.
* In 1953, the New England Journal of Medicine announced that the evidence linking smoking and lung cancer was “so strong as to be considered proof within the everyday meaning of the word.”
* Nearly some 90 percent of nonsmokers have some residues of cigarette smoke in their blood.
* The United States produces several tons of tobacco each year. Only China produces more.
* About three quarters of the American Tobacco market is controlled by two companies, Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco (formerly R.J. Reynolds).
* Tobacco-brand appearances have been seen in many adolescent and family movies. These include Ghostbusters II, Home Alone 2, Honey I shrunk the Kids, Kindergarten Cop, men in Black and The Nutty Professor.
* Tobacco is a poisonous plant. The poison in it is nicotine. Tobacco plants contain nicotine as a natural defense, to keep bugs from eating their leaves.
* Workers on Tobacco Farms sometimes suffer nicotine poisoning when they absorb the chemical through their skin.
