Facts about cigarette smoking:

• Most people begin smoking as teenagers, usually due to peer pressure.  People with friends or parents who smoke are more likely to take up smoking.

• Nicotine is highly addictive and reaches the brain within seconds of taking a puff from a cigarette, but its effects wear off in a few seconds.  This often leads the person to smoke another cigarette.

• Smokers usually become dependent on nicotine and suffer physical and emotional withdrawal when they quit.

• An estimated 44.5 million adults are current smokers in the US

• Smoking is the #1 preventable cause of death, and is currently the cause of death in every 1 out of 5 people in the United States.

• It has been found that cigarettes kill more people in the US than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and drug abuse combined.
• Cigarettes have multiple poisons, including 43 known carcinogens.

• Smoking low tar or low nicotine cigarettes has been shown to have little effect on the overall damage that smoking does.

• People who smoke a pack of cigarettes a day have more than twice the risk of heart attack than non-smokers.