Why Is Smoking Bad for You?

Author: Eric Jiang

Editors: Peggy Yang and Liane Xu

Artist: Nicole T

Today, it’s commonly known that smoking can cause severe damage to the health of every individual. Smoking leads to disease and disability and harms nearly every organ of the body. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, and diabetes are just a few outcomes of smoking. This is familiar information that appears frequently on the internet. But what is an actual image of the outcomes?

According to researchers at “Action on Smoking and Health,” the average amount of life expectancy lost for each pack of cigarettes smoked is 28 minutes, and the years of life expectancy a regular smoker typically loses is 25 years. This is only if the person is lucky enough to not suffer from diseases along the way. Unfortunately, lung cancer alone kills 1.2 million people a year, and 10 to 15 percent of smokers will develop lung cancer. Including the possibilities for developing other diseases, it’s more likely for a person to die from those than from the damage of smoking itself.

Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States. This is about 1 in 5 annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. If you’re a smoker, you could never guess which day you will also become a part of the death numbers.

Apart from smoking itself, secondhand exposure has caused more than 41,000 deaths per year in the United States. In fact, about 400 deaths in infants are also recorded every year. Among these incidents, many are the results of high interaction with smokers, which causes a long exposure to smoke. Smoking is an irresponsible action on not only your body but also the bodies of those who surround you.

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Citations:

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https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/health_effects/index.htm.

“Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” (2021, June 2). Fast facts. Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm.

Kelland, K. (2010, June 16). “Nutrients may be why some smokers avoid cancer.” Reuters.

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MediLexicon International. (n.d.). “The effect of smoking on life span.” Medical News Today.

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