QUITTING SMOKING: A MUST - A Posting for Smokers

By the year 2030, the worldwide death toll from cigarette smoking will be 10 million annually (20 per minute).
The tobacco industry has a multi-billion-dollar lobby and an 8 billion dollar a year advertising budget to insure that statistic is realized.
Other then driving a car without brakes, there is very little you can do that is worse for your health then smoking. It really does not matter what else you do to take care of yourself, if you smoke, you are sending a crystal clear message to your body. On a deep cellular level, you are changing the very fabric of your DNA and doing untold damage. Now, in all fairness, you are not smoking because you want to. You are smoking because you have to; you are addicted to one of the most powerfully addictive substances on this planet, nicotine. The most fascinating thing about addiction is, until the realization comes that you no longer can or no longer want to continue using (whatever the substance is), you think you are doing it by choice. You are not. That is why it is called addiction. It is important to understand this because if you are one of those people who feel it is a sign of weakness to use some type of support to quit (like the patch or gum or medication), you are doing yourself a tremendous disservice. This is especially true for smoking because it is not the nicotine that is killing you. It is the delivery system for the nicotine that is killing you. It's called a "cigarette". It is the 4000 compounds and high levels of oxidants found in cigarette smoke that are doing all the damage.

There is something else you should be aware of; the tobacco industry has been adding adulterants to tobacco for decades. Primarily, coumarin (also known as rat poison), which is added for flavor and as a tissue softening agent. By softening lung tissue, it allows nicotine to be absorbed deeper into the lungs creating an increased need for the drug. In addition, they intentionally manipulate the amount of nicotine in cigarettes increasing the overall addictive effect. You see how cleaver the industry is. They have gotten away with this for years. When Dr. Jeffery Wigand (The Insider) blew the whistle on the tobacco industry in 1996, their attorney, Thomas Bezanson claimed that it wasn’t “untrue but that on trade secret grounds, it should not be revealed”. Coumarin was banned as an adulterant in 1997 but due to lack of reporting, it is still found in tobacco products.

Some quick stats rattled off by Wigand in an interview a few years ago: " The number of people in the U.S. who die each year from smoking-related illnesses: 430,000. The percentage of adult smokers who started before they turned 18: 80% to 90%. The amount of money tobacco companies spend on advertising each year: more than $8 billion. The percentage of 6-year-olds surveyed who associated Joe Camel with smoking: 91%." Now that is scary.

In Philip J. Hilts book, "Smoke Screen: The Truth Behind The Tobacco Industry Cover-Up", the extent of the deception is revealed. Study after study (conducted by the tobacco industry) that disclosed just how lethal their product is, were encoded and buried. Even within the original documents, words like "cancer" and "nicotine" were given code names. But the industries most closely guarded secret is it's targeting of youth. It is something the industry must do to sustain itself. If they cannot recruit new smokers, what do you think would happen to the demand for cigarettes in a relatively short period of time? It would drop to zero.

What I am trying to impress upon you, is that the tobacco industry has knowingly, willingly and with deceit, created a world full of people addicted to a drug that they, almost exclusively, provide the delivery system for. And what I am asking you to consider is; do you want to support an industry that promotes human suffering and profits from its blatant disregard for human life?

Let's talk about money. Not yours, ours. The economic burden that cigarette smoking places on the United States for medical care and lost productivity is conservatively estimated to be $180 billion dollars a year. The health care costs alone are about 97 billion. Who's paying for that? We all are. Everybody has to share the cost. A significant percentage of this country's total health care bill is attributable to smoking. A very unfortunate statistic is that some of the recipients of those health care dollars are not smokers. They live or work with one. Approximately 54,000 people die every year from second-hand exposure to cigarette smoke. A recent report estimated that second hand-smoke cost the U.S. 10 billion a year.

To be con't....