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.
