Anyone can look at the side of a cigarette pack and see one of many Surgeon General’s warnings that are on every box of cigarettes, “Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Risk to Your Health”. Even though smokers see this warning every time they open a new pack they still light one of the twenty cigarettes it contains. Smokers should quit the habit because it not only severely affects their health but the health of everyone around them. However, quitting smoking is not easy but a smoke free life can be achieved if a person is dedicated enough to quit.

According to Kidshealth.org “every single day nearly 4,400 kids between the ages of 12 and 17 start smoking” and many adults start smoking as well. Most new smokers are teenagers that are not even old enough to purchase a pack of cigarettes. These teens usually start because of peer pressure, because they are curious, or because their parents smoke so they are always around smoking. Cigarette companies also contribute to teens smoking by placing advertisements in magazines, such as “Maxim”, that make cigarette smoking appear to be “an exciting, glamorous, and healthy adult activity”. Tobacco companies try to get younger people to smoke because studies have shown that the younger a person starts smoking the more likely it is that they will become addicted. However, it also appears that the younger a smoker starts the more likely they are to develop health programs. It is a “double-edged sword” that tobacco companies create for the youth of America. Smoking has gone down in recent years because of education programs in public schools and on television. The American Cancer Society (ASC) stats that “cigarette smoking has declined from about 42% of the population in 1965 to about 22% in 2003” which shows the improvements made in getting Americans to stop smoking. However, smoking is still popular among high school teens and other youths. One out of four high school students used some type of tobacco product in a 2004 survey by the ASC. More males recorded using more tobacco than females among all products except cigarettes where the number is about equal. Even though smoking has declined over the years many people still start smoking everyday.

Cigarettes are one of the few legal drugs which intended use is to be smoked and cause harm to the body. According to the ACS “cigarettes smoke is a complex mixture of compounds that contains tar, which is made up of more than 4,000 chemicals, including over sixty known to cause cancer.” These chemicals include cyanide, formaldehyde, methanol, ammonia, and many different kinds of rat poisons. The chemicals can cause a variety of health problems including heart disease and many kinds of lung damage including chronic bronchitis, where excess mucus is secreted in the lungs which make the smoker cough frequently. Another common lung disease caused by cigarette smoking, emphysema, affects the air sacs in your lungs making it harder to absorb oxygen into the blood stream. When both these conditions are present it is called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease because both chronic bronchitis and emphysema regularly form within a smoker at the same time. “Tobacco use accounts for about one third of all cancer deaths in the United States and 90% of lung cancer” according to the ACS whom describes smoking as causing “cancers of the larynx, oral cavity, pharynx, and esophagus” which can ultimately lead to death. Even though smoking does not affect the heart as much as the lungs it still increases the risk of heart related death. A person who smokes is more likely to die form a heart attack and will suffer from many other physical heart problems that get worse the more someone smokes. Both men and women are affected differently by smoking cigarettes. Pregnant woman are at risk because woman who smoke during pregnancy have a much higher risk of having a miscarriage or the child being born with birth defects. According to the Patient Education Institute “it is more difficult for women smokers to conceive children than it is for non-smoking women” and they have a higher chance of getting cervical cancer. Men who smoke have blood flow decreased to the penis making erections weak or non-existent while also lowering sperm count. Even second hand smoke can cause health problems if someone is exposed to it long enough. Second hand smoke is also called ETS, environmental tobacco smoke, which according to the ACS “causes 3,000 lung cancer deaths and 40,000 deaths from heart disease each year”. The government realizes the dangers of ETS and has acted by limiting where a person can smoke. Smoking was banned on all domestic airplane flights because flight attendants were being exposed to large quantities of smoke that caused them develop health problems. Today smoking is banned in almost all public buildings including the White House. There are many consequences from smoking and tobacco use that not only cause serious health problems to the user but also to those around him or her.

The nicotine contained in cigarettes makes it extremely hard for a person to quit smoking. Nicotine is the chemical in cigarettes that is addictive because it gives a person a good feeling when smoked and a smoker can get dependent on the feeling they get when absorbing nicotine. It is a poison that affects a person's heart rate by increasing it by two or three beats per minute and it also decreases blood flow to the feet and hands, which lower the body’s skin temperature. The first way many people try to quit is "cold turkey", where a person just stops completely without any form of help. Most people, however, fail to quit their first attempt and decide to try getting some help in the form of nicotine replacement therapies. Nicotine replacement therapies are medicines that decrease a person's withdrawal symptoms by providing amounts of nicotine that replace the nicotine a smoker otherwise would have received from smoking a cigarette. There are many forms of nicotine replacement therapies such as patches, gums, lozenges, inhalers, and nasal sprays. However, nasal sprays and inhalers can only be acquired through a doctor's prescription. There are new medications that work the opposite of nicotine replacement therapies. Instead of replacing the nicotine that a smoker would gain from a cigarette the medications stop nicotine in cigarettes from affecting the body. There are two main medications, varenicline and rimonabant, that are taken in pill form while others can be taken with injections. These medications are not available to the public yet because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still testing them. However, early testing is very promising in the drugs ability to aid in smokers quitting the habit forever. The earlier a smoker quits the less chance he or she has of acquire a smoke related illness. Twenty minutes after a person quits smoking their blood pressure returns to normal and their hands and feet return to normal temperature. After one to nine months, depending on how long a person smoked, their shortness of breath will decrease and the lungs return to normal function. The longer a smoker abstains from cigarettes the better his or her health will become. There are many reasons for a person to quit but there is no single best way to quit. Some therapies work for some people and others can just quit "cold turkey". Either way people attempt to quit smoking the nicotine in cigarettes will always make it difficult because of its addictive qualities which will drawl people back to smoking.

Of course it is always better for someone to never start smoking so he or she does not get addicted to the nicotine. However, with the amount of Americans continuing to light up everyday antismoking campaigns and advertisements are necessary to get more people to quit. If everyone quit smoking it would make a much cleaner environment for everyone and will save many lives. Smoking is a cancer on our society that is choking people of life and infecting more Americans everyday.