Smoking

Smoking - Smoking tobacco dramatically increases the risk of developing many diseases. It is responsible for a substantial majority of cases of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and most smokers die either from these respiratory diseases or from ischaemic heart disease. Smoking also causes cancers of the upper respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, pancreas, bladder and kidney, and increases risks of peripheral vascular disease, stroke and peptic ulceration. Maternal smoking is an important cause of fetal growth retardation. 

Smoking can damage your health

Stop Smoking

Moreover, there is increasing evidence that passive (or ‘secondhand’) smoking has adverse effects on cardiovascular and respiratory health. When the ill-health effects of smoking were first discovered, doctors imagined that warning people about the dangers of smoking would result in them giving up. However, it also took increased taxation of tobacco, banning of advertising and support for smoking cessation to maintain a decline in smoking rates. In several European countries (including the UK), this has culminated in a complete ban on smoking in all public places—legislation that only became possible as the public became convinced of the dangers of secondhand smoke.  However, smoking rates remain high in many poorer areas and are increasing amongst young women. In many developing countries tobacco companies have found new markets and rates are rising. World-wide, there are ∼1 billion smokers, and 3 million die prematurely each year as a result of their habit.

In reality, there is a complex hierarchy of systems that interact to cause smokers to initiate and maintain their habit. At the molecular and cellular levels, nicotine acts on the nervous system to create dependence, so that smokers experience unpleasant effects when they attempt to quit. So, even if they know it is harmful, the role of addiction in maintaining the habit is important. Influences at the personal and social level are just as important. Many individuals bolster their denial of the harmful effects of smoking by focusing on someone they knew personally who smoked until he or she was very old and died peacefully in bed. Such strong counterexamples help smokers to maintain internal beliefs that comfort them when presented with statistical evidence.