Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body and diminishes a person’s overall health. Cigarette smoking causes 87⁰/₀ of lung cancers and other health problems like lung disease, heart disease, blood vessel disease, stokes and even cataracts. Smoking cigarettes is also harmful to the people around you as they inhale the smoke, that’s called second hand smoking which makes the person at a high risk of getting the same health problems as smokers do.
Tobacco use is the single greatest cause of preventable death globally. The WHO estimates that each year, 6 million people die from tobacco use and out of the 6 million, 600,000 thousand are second hand smokers.
The effects of tobacco depend on the number of years that a person smokes and how much the person smokes. Starting to smoke earlier in life and smoking cigarettes high in tar increases the risk of these diseases.
Diseases from tobacco use affect the Heart, Lungs and Liver. Smoking is a major risk factor for :-
• Heart attacks
• Strokes
• Hypertension
• Peripheral vascular disease
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) like chronic bronchitis, emphysema
• Cancers like Lung cancer, Pancreatic cancer, Larynx and mouth cancers
• Erectile dysfunction in men
• Impotence due to arterial narrowing
• In pregnant women, it causes, premature birth, low birth weight, sudden infant death syndrome(SIDS)
• Female infertility. Nicotine interferes the ability of the body to create Oestrogen, a hormone that regulates folliculogenesis and ovulation
• Cigarette smoking interferes with embryo transplant, endometrial receptivity, endometrial angiogenesis, uterine blood flow and uterine myometrium
• It reduces the chances of IVP producing a live birth by 34 percent and increases the risk of an IVP pregnancy miscarrying by 30 percent.
• Slower wound healing after surgery
• Increased rate of postoperative healing complications
LIGHT CIGARETTES AND CANCER RISKS
Light cigarettes are the ones with :-
• Cellulose acetate filters (to trap tar)
• Highly porous cigarette paper (to allow toxic chemicals to escape)
• Ventilation holes in the filter tip (to dilute smoke with air
Light cigarettes are not less hazardous than regular ones. Tar exposure from light cigarettes are just as high as that from a regular cigarette, If the smoker takes long, deep or frequent puffs. There is nothing like safe cigarette, the only way to be safe is to quit smoking completely.
Light cigarettes do cause cancer as the normal ones do.
HOW TO HELP SMOKERS QUIT
• Hard writing tobacco advert warnings and graphic park warnings
• Advertisement bans in countries
• Adding taxes
• Stopping illicit trade of tobacco