Smokers

[ally]

I never drink and drive (rarely drink at all, actually; too many empty calories). If we go out I'll offer to drive so my husband can have a drink or 2.

My wife does the same for me and vise versa. As our boy's and they're friends grew up, all of us parents made a deal that if any of them were having a drink then none of us would let them drive anywhere. We weren't stupid about the fact that they probably would try but they learned to trust us all and realized that we weren't going to rat them out if they stayed the night. That included anyone that happened to be in their company. On the other side of the coin , they also new that if they refused then, we were going to call the police ourselves. They soon realized that the dinking and driving issue was not just.... all about them

[docron]

I've been smoking for 5 years now (not that long, I know) and I fucking love every second of it.

The smoking ban is ridiculous. Bars and pubs? Are you shitting me? Who the hell goes to a bar or pub expecting to come out just as healthy as when they went in!? Smoke is part of the atmosphere at bars! Without it, we might as well be drinking beers at fucking L.A. Fitness or something.

They should leave us at least one safe haven.

When will they realize that like 40% of the world does it?

[ledbaby]

I don't allow people to smoke here. There's two huge sand filled planter pots out front.

Use them.

Never known anyone to say anything about cannabis either. As long as it's outside.

[Cletus]

I once got really drunk in a bar. In the corner there was an arcade machine with one of those "need for speed" type car racing games. So I popped in a few quarters and had some fun.

That's the only "drunk driving" I've ever done in my life.

[Electrophile]

There is no smoking in my house or in my car. I won't even sit near someone who has been smoking, because the smell is nauseating.

[wanna be drummer]

We need to do the same for alcohol.

Let them advertise in Bars, Taverns, Pubs, and Clubs.....Thats a target audience if I ever saw one !

Um...why?

What right do we have to tell a beer company that they cannot advertise their product on the biggest ad market out there? It's not like it would prevent people from drinking or something..

[Del Zeppnile]

I've been smoking 2-3 packs of cigarettes everyday for the last 30 years and my lung feels fine.

[Dzldoc]

I've been smoking 2-3 packs of cigarettes everyday for the last 30 years and my lung feels fine.

Hahaha every time you cough a piece up into you're hands, "feels fine to me"

[kirchzep27]

A pack of cigarettes just went up a 1.50 a pack in ny, fucking crazy. Hey -albany, tax milk... or something, spread it around alittle. right?

A sudden increase of a dollar and a half a pack is brutal imo.

[Del Zeppnile]

A pack of cigarettes just went up a 1.50 a pack in ny, fucking crazy. Hey -albany, tax milk... or something, spread it around alittle. right?

A sudden increase of a dollar and a half a pack is brutal imo.

Yeah give the tobacco vice a break for awhile.

I say if they the government wants to raise more money they should legalize prostitution and then turn around a put a $1.50 tax on a pack of condoms.

Supply side economics always works better.

[Footsteps of Dawn]

I don't smoke, but I still think it's a little lame that you can't smoke in bars anymore. I'm glad they banned smoking in restaurants, but bars? Come on! Now you can't even drink at the beach around here anymore, either. What's the point of having all these progressive civil liberties like gay marriage and medical marijuana if they're just going to take away all our fun right and left? So much for California being so open-minded.

[Gainsbarre]

A pack of cigarettes just went up a 1.50 a pack in ny, fucking crazy. Hey -albany, tax milk... or something, spread it around alittle. right?

A sudden increase of a dollar and a half a pack is brutal imo.

a packet of 20 Cigarettes costs over $10 here...

[kirchzep27]

A pack of cigarettes is 10dollars in nyc, but now with the tax increase they are 6-7 in the suburbs. I guess i'm stupid for bringing it up cause everything has gone up, but i remember the past increases being 15-25cents, not a 1.50.

[kirchzep27]

I don't smoke, but I still think it's a little lame that you can't smoke in bars anymore. I'm glad they banned smoking in restaurants, but bars? Come on! Now you can't even drink at the beach around here anymore, either. What's the point of having all these progressive civil liberties like gay marriage and medical marijuana if they're just going to take away all our fun right and left? So much for California being so open-minded.

Ah, smoking in bars....the good old days huh. But i hear that the new drink is vodka and red bull w/the early 20s crowd, so the times they change.

[Footsteps of Dawn]

Ah, smoking in bars....the good old days huh. But i hear that the new drink is vodka and red bull w/the early 20s crowd, so the times they change.

Haha, too true... My friend orders a Grey Goose and Red Bull all the time...I just stand there and shake my head. What a waste of Grey Goose, not to mention her money. It's still going to taste overwhelmingly like Red Bull, whether you put Smirnoff or Ketel One in it. Nasty tasting drink anyway...although it is kind of a nice pick-me-up when it gets to be around 1 o'clock and you're starting to fade. I just order a plain ol' Red Bull and save myself some money...no use wasting vodka on that stuff.

But anyway, back to smoking!

[kirchzep27]

Haha, too true... My friend orders a Grey Goose and Red Bull all the time...I just stand there and shake my head. What a waste of Grey Goose, not to mention her money. It's still going to taste overwhelmingly like Red Bull, whether you put Smirnoff or Ketel One in it. Nasty tasting drink anyway...although it is kind of a nice pick-me-up when it gets to be around 1 o'clock and you're starting to fade. I just order a plain ol' Red Bull and save myself some money...no use wasting vodka on that stuff.

But anyway, back to smoking!

Yeah, weird huh... give me an absolute and cranberry.

[ledbaby]

Yeah give the tobacco vice a break for awhile.

I say if they the government wants to raise more money they should legalize prostitution and then turn around a put a $1.50 tax on a pack of condoms.

Supply side economics always works better.

Maybe they should legalise killing ones self. Oh that's right, there's no law against that.

Carry on!

[kirchzep27]

legalize,demonize,or realize...

[~tangerine~]

Tax the shit outta cigarettes. Nobody should be smoking those things to begin with. People complaining about "footing the bill" for gays who marry. Who's footing the bill for all the uninsured people who are hospitalized each year secondary to the effects smoking?

[~tangerine~]

Some stats (article goes back to 1998)

$72.7 Billion: Smoking's Annual Health Care Cost

By Patricia McBroom, Public Affairs

posted September 16, 1998

The total cost of caring for people with health problems caused by cigarette smoking -- counting all sources of medical payments -- is about $72.7 billion per year, according to health economists at the University of California.

The figure is almost six times higher than the cost per year of smoking-related Medicaid payments alone, reported last spring by the same Berkeley and UCSF economists.

The new total estimate "translates the adverse health effects (of smoking) into dollar terms, the universal language of decision makers," said the analysis published today in Public Health Reports. All payments made in 1993 by Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration medical programs, military medical programs, private health insurance companies and out-of-pocket payments were analyzed for that fraction of illness caused by cigarette smoking. By comparison, the March report counted only the cost of smoking-related Medicaid payments -- $12.9 billion that year.

"I am not surprised by these costs," said Leonard Miller, an economist and professor in the School of Social Welfare at Berkeley, who is first author on the report.

"You expect a figure of this magnitude for the impact of smoking on health care, when you consider that one in five deaths per year is due to cigarette use," said Miller.

Smoking accounted for 11.8 percent of all medical expenditures in the U.S. in 1993, according to the analysis.

The report was co-authored by Dorothy Rice, professor emeritus of health economics at the UCSF Institute for Health and Aging and former director of the National Center for Health Statistics. Other authors are Xiulan Zhang, a Berkeley graduate student, and Wendy Max, associate professor of health economics at UCSF.

"We can now see the tremendous burden of smoking on society," said Rice. "These are very high costs."

She pointed out that the 1993 bill for California alone amounted to $8.7 billion, the highest total in the nation, followed by New York, with $6.6 billion in smoking-related disease costs. Wyoming, at $80 million in 1993, had the lowest expenditure for illness caused by cigarette smoking.

Rice also said that if a proposed financial settlement between Congress and tobacco companies had been reached last spring, it would not have come close to compensating private and public insurance payers for the cost of smoking-related illnesses.

That settlement, now off the boards, would have cost tobacco companies $368.5 billion, paid out over 25 years, in exchange for a cap on future lawsuit liability against the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry pulled out of the negotiations when the proposed settlement rose above $500 billion over 25 years.

But according to the Miller-Rice report, the actual cost of medical care for smoking-related disease in the next 25 years will be an astronomical $1.8 trillion.

"The amount being considered was clearly well below the actual amount that will be spent for the health care of smokers whose health has been damaged by cigarettes," said Rice.

Estimates in the report of "smoking-attributable expenditures" (SAEs) are derived from 11 equations that link smoking history with health in two ways: (1) the likelihood of a prior treatment for a tobacco-related disease (lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary heart disease, stroke and arteriosclerosis); and (2) self-reported poor health. Other calculations then analyzed the impact of self-reported poor health on direct medical expenditures.

Miller accounted for the impact of 11 such factors: age, gender, region of the country, education, income, body mass, seat belt use, smoking history, self-reported health status, previous treatment for tobacco-related diseases and type of medical expenditure.

"These are the best federal and collective state data. It's the best we can do at this point to estimate the impact of smoking on health costs in all 50 states," said Miller.

http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1998/0916/smoking.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[kirchzep27]

google obesity stats. anyway, i believe alot of the statistics feed a fear of dying, but hey...

[~tangerine~]

google obesity stats. anyway, i believe alot of the statistics feed a fear of dying, but hey...

"Cigarettes are a toxic cocktail of 4000 substances"...just read that. Pretty frightening.

I don't get your point about the stats relating to a fear of dying.

Obesity is a separate issue and not the topic of this thread. Obesity does not kill the amount of people smoking does, and has no negative effect on the people around them, the way SECOND HAND SMOKE does.

I see the results of cigarette smoking on human lives every day in my profession. You CAN NOT minimize the negative consequences it has on the lives of people who become sick from smoking. Same goes for the loved ones of these people.

Think about this. One of the major side effects that occurs when someone becomes "symptomatic" from the effects of smoking is Shortness of Breath. IMO, that is one of the scariest feelings you can have. Not being able to breath...

Fact Sheet

Health Effects of Cigarette Smoking

(updated January 2008)

Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body; causing many diseases and reducing the health of smokers in general.

1 The adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account for an estimated 438,000 deaths, or nearly 1 of every 5 deaths, each year in the United States.2,3 More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.2,4

Cancer

Cancer is the second leading cause of death and was among the first diseases causually linked to smoking.1

Smoking causes about 90% of lung cancer deaths in men and almost 80% of lung cancer deaths in women. The risk of dying from lung cancer is more than 23 times higher among men who smoke cigarettes, and about 13 times higher among women who smoke cigarettes compared with never smokers.1

Smoking causes cancers of the bladder, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx (voice box), esophagus, cervix, kidney, lung, pancreas, and stomach, and causes acute myeloid leukemia.1

Rates of cancers related to cigarette smoking vary widely among members of racial/ethnic groups, but are generally highest in African-American men.5

Cardiovascular Disease (Heart and Circulatory System)

Smoking causes coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.1 Cigarette smokers are 2–4 times more likely to develop coronary heart disease than nonsmokers.6

Cigarette smoking approximately doubles a person's risk for stroke.7,8

Cigarette smoking causes reduced circulation by narrowing the blood vessels (arteries). Smokers are more than 10 times as likely as nonsmokers to develop peripheral vascular disease.9

Smoking causes abdominal aortic aneurysm.1

Respiratory Disease and Other Effects

Cigarette smoking is associated with a tenfold increase in the risk of dying from chronic obstructive lung disease.7 About 90% of all deaths from chronic obstructive lung diseases are attributable to cigarette smoking.1

Cigarette smoking has many adverse reproductive and early childhood effects, including an increased risk for infertility, preterm delivery, stillbirth, low birth weight, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).1

Postmenopausal women who smoke have lower bone density than women who never smoked. Women who smoke have an increased risk for hip fracture than never smokers.10

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics...lth_effects.htm

[~tangerine~]

A good article. Smokers out there, try to quit. That's my soapbox...

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/...sp?sitearea=PED

Cigarettes are dangerous and addictive. Find out what really happens when you light up.

I Want to Help

You can help in the fight against cancer. Donate and volunteer. It's easy and fun!

Learn more

Cigarette Smoking

Introduction

The 1982 United States Surgeon General's Report stated that "Cigarette smoking is the major single cause of cancer mortality in the United States." This statement is as true today as it was in 1982.

Smoking is responsible for nearly 1 in 5 deaths in the United States. Because cigarette smoking and tobacco use are acquired behaviors -- activities that people choose to do -- smoking is the most preventable cause of premature death in our society.

This document gives a brief overview of cigarette smoking: who smokes, how smoking affects health, what makes it so hard to quit, and what some of the many benefits of quitting are. For more information on this topic, see the American Cancer Society document, Guide to Quitting Smoking.

Who Smokes?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 44.5 million US adults were current smokers in 2006 (the most recent year for which numbers are available). This is 20.8% of all adults (23.9% of men, 18.0% of women) -- more than 1 out of 5 people.

When broken down by race/ethnicity, the numbers were as follows:

Whites 21.9%

African Americans 23.0%

Hispanics 15.2%

American Indians/Alaska Natives 32.4%

Asian Americans 10.4%

The numbers were higher in younger age groups. In 2006, CDC reported almost 24% of those 18 to 44 years old were current smokers, compared to 10.2% in those aged 65 or older.

Nationwide, 22.3% of high school students and 8.1% of middle school students were smoking in 2004. More White and Hispanic students smoked cigarettes. (For more information, see the American Cancer Society document, Child and Teen Tobacco Use.)

Health Effects of Smoking

About half of all Americans who continue to smoke will die because of the habit. Each year about 438,000 people in the United States die from illnesses related to cigarette smoking. Cigarettes kill more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined.

Cancer

Cigarette smoking accounts for at least 30% of all cancer deaths. It is a major cause of cancers of the lung, larynx (voice box), oral cavity, pharynx (throat), esophagus (swallowing tube connected to the stomach), and bladder, and it contributes to the development of cancers of the pancreas, cervix, kidney, stomach, and also some leukemias.

Smoking is responsible for about 87% of lung cancer deaths. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women, and is one of the most difficult cancers to treat. Lung cancer is a disease that can in many cases be prevented. Groups that promote non-smoking as part of their religion, such as Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists, have much lower rates of lung cancer and other smoking-related cancers.

Other Health Problems

Only about half of the deaths related to smoking are from cancer. Smoking is also a major cause of heart disease, aneurysms, bronchitis, emphysema, and stroke, and it makes pneumonia and asthma worse.

Using tobacco can also damage a woman's reproductive health. Tobacco use is linked with reduced fertility and a higher risk of miscarriage, early delivery (premature birth), stillbirth, infant death, and is a cause of low birth-weight in infants. It has also been linked to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Smoking has also been linked to other health problems, including gum disease, cataracts, bone thinning, hip fractures, and peptic ulcers. It is also linked to macular degeneration, an eye disease that can cause blindness.

Furthermore, the smoke from cigarettes (called secondhand smoke or environmental tobacco smoke) has a harmful health effect on those exposed to it. (See the American Cancer Society documents, Secondhand Smoke and Women and Smoking.)

Effects on Quantity and Quality of Life

Based on data collected from 1995 to 1999, the CDC estimated that adult male smokers lost an average of 13.2 years of life and female smokers lost 14.5 years of life because of smoking.

But not all of the health problems related to smoking result in deaths. Smoking generally affects a smoker's health, harming nearly every organ of the body, and causing many diseases. According to the CDC in 2000, about 8.6 million people had at least one chronic disease because they smoked or had smoked. Many of these people were suffering from more than one smoking-related condition. The diseases that occurred most often were chronic bronchitis, emphysema, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer. These diseases can steal away a person's quality of life long before death. Smoking-related illness can limit a person's activities by making it harder to breathe, get around, work, or play.

Taking Care of Yourself

If you have used tobacco in any form, now or in the past, tell your health care provider so he or she can be sure that you have right preventive health care. It is well known that smoking puts you at risk for certain health-related illnesses. This means part of your health care should focus on related screening and preventive measures to help you stay as healthy as possible. For example, you will want to regularly check the inside of your mouth for any changes and have an oral exam by your doctor or dentist if you do find any changes or problems. The American Cancer Society recommends that periodic check-ups should include oral cavity (mouth) exams. By doing this tobacco users may be able to find oral changes and leukoplakia (white patches on the mouth membranes) early. This may help prevent oral cancer.

You should also be aware of any of the following:

any change in a cough (for example, you cough up more phlegm than usual)

a new cough

coughing up blood

hoarseness

trouble breathing

wheezing

headaches

chest pain

loss of appetite

weight loss

general fatigue (feeling tired all the time)

repeated respiratory infections

Any of these could be signs of lung cancer or a number of other lung conditions and you should report any symptom to your doctor. Although these can be signs of a problem, many lung cancers do not cause any noticeable symptoms until they are advanced and have spread to other parts of the body.

If you have any health concerns that you think may be related to your cigarette smoking, please see your health care provider as quickly as possible. Taking care of yourself and getting treatment for small problems will give you the best chance for successful treatment. The best way, though, to take care of yourself and decrease your risk for life-threatening lung problems is to quit smoking.

Ingredients in Tobacco

Cigarettes, cigars, and spit and pipe tobacco are made from dried tobacco leaves, as well as ingredients added for flavor and other properties. More than 4,000 individual chemicals have been identified in tobacco and tobacco smoke. Among these are more than 60 chemicals that are known carcinogens (cancer-causing agents).

There are hundreds of substances added to cigarettes by manufacturers to enhance the flavor or to make the smoking experience more pleasant. Some of the compounds found in tobacco smoke include ammonia, tar, and carbon monoxide. Exactly what effects these substances have on the cigarette smoker’s health is unknown, but there is no evidence that lowering the tar content of a cigarette improves the health risk. Manufacturers do not usually give out information to the public about the additives used in cigarettes, so it is hard to know the health risks.

Nicotine Addiction

Addiction is characterized by the repeated, compulsive seeking or use of a substance despite its harmful effects and consequences. Addiction is defined as physical and psychological dependence on the substance. Nicotine is the addictive drug in tobacco. Regular use of tobacco products leads to addiction in a high proportion of users.

In 1988, the US Surgeon General concluded the following:

Cigarettes and other forms of tobacco are addicting.

Nicotine is the addicting drug in tobacco.

The ways people become addicted to tobacco are similar to those that for addiction to other drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Nicotine is found in substantial amounts in all forms of tobacco. It is absorbed readily through the lungs with cigarette smoking and through the mouth or nose with oral tobacco. From these entry points, nicotine quickly spreads throughout the body.

Tobacco companies are required by law to report nicotine levels in cigarettes to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), but in most states they are not required to show the amount of nicotine on the cigarette package label. The actual amount of nicotine available to the smoker in a given brand of cigarettes is often different from the level reported to the FTC. In one regular cigarette, the average amount of nicotine the smoker gets ranges between about 1 mg and 2 mg.

Although 70% of smokers want to quit and more than 40% try to quit each year, fewer than 5% succeed. This is because smokers not only become physically addicted to nicotine; there is a strong emotional (psychological) aspect and they often link smoking with many social activities. All of these factors make smoking a hard habit to break.

Benefits of Quitting Smoking

Nicotine is a very addictive drug. People usually try to quit many times before they are successful. In September 1990, the US Surgeon General outlined the benefits of quitting smoking:

Quitting smoking has major and immediate health benefits for people with and without smoking-related disease.

Former smokers live longer than continuing smokers. For example, people who quit smoking before age 50 have one-half the risk of dying in the next 15 years compared with people who keep smoking.

Quitting smoking decreases the risk of lung cancer, other cancers, heart attack, stroke, and chronic lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

Women who stop smoking before pregnancy or during the first 3 to 4 months of pregnancy reduce their risk of having a low birth-weight baby to that of women who never smoked.

The health benefits of quitting smoking are far greater than any risks from the small weight gain (usually less than 10 pounds) or any emotional or psychological problems that may follow quitting.

Your risk of having lung cancer and other smoking-related cancers is affected by how much you have been exposed to cigarette smoke over your lifetime. This is measured by the number of cigarettes you smoked each day, how old you were when you started smoking, and the number of years you have smoked. There is no way to accurately calculate a person's risk of getting cancer, but the more you smoke and the longer you do it, the greater your risk.

The good news is that the risk of having lung cancer and other smoking-related illnesses can be reduced if you stop smoking. The risk of lung cancer is less in people who quit smoking than in people who continue to smoke the same number of cigarettes every day, and the risk decreases as the number of years since quitting increases.

People who stop smoking when they are young get the greatest health benefits from quitting. Those who quit in their 30s may avoid most of the risk due to tobacco use. However, even smokers who quit after age 50 largely reduce their risk of dying early. The argument that it is too late to quit smoking because the damage is already done is not true. It is never too late to quit smoking!

For more information, see the American Cancer Society document, Guide to Quitting Smoking.

[~tangerine~]

To address anyone who needs to defend their habit, this article is for all of us non-smokers who don't want to be a part of your habit...

Smokers aren't the only ones being harmed by their habit. Secondhand smoke kills, too. Learn how to protect yourself and your loved ones.

What Is Secondhand Smoke?

Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) or passive smoke, is a mixture of 2 forms of smoke from burning tobacco products:

Sidestream smoke: smoke that comes from the end of a lighted cigarette, pipe, or cigar

Mainstream smoke: smoke that is exhaled by a smoker

When non-smokers are exposed to secondhand smoke it is called involuntary smoking or passive smoking. Non-smokers exposed to secondhand smoke absorb nicotine and other toxic chemicals just like smokers do. The more secondhand smoke you are exposed to, the higher the level of these harmful chemicals in your body.

Why Is Secondhand Smoke a Problem?

Secondhand smoke is classified as a "known human carcinogen" (cancer-causing agent) by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US National Toxicology Program, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization.

Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemical compounds. More than 60 of these are known or suspected to cause cancer.

Secondhand smoke can be harmful in many ways. In the United States alone, each year it is responsible for:

an estimated 35,000 deaths from heart disease in non-smokers who live with smokers

about 3,400 lung cancer deaths in non-smoking adults

other breathing problems in non-smokers, including coughing, mucus, chest discomfort, and reduced lung function

150,000 to 300,000 lung infections (such as pneumonia and bronchitis) in children younger than 18 months of age, which result in 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations

increases in the number and severity of asthma attacks in about 200,000 to 1 million children who have asthma

more than 750,000 middle ear infections in children

Pregnant women exposed to secondhand smoke are also at increased risk of having low birth weight babies.

An issue that continues to be studied is whether secondhand smoke may increase the risk of breast cancer. Both mainstream and secondhand smoke contain about 20 chemicals that, in high concentrations, cause breast cancer in rodents. Chemicals in tobacco smoke reach breast tissue and are found in breast milk.

The evidence regarding secondhand smoke and breast cancer risk in human studies is still being debated, partly because the risk has not been shown to be increased in active smokers. One possible explanation for this is that tobacco smoke may have different effects on breast cancer risk in smokers and in those who are exposed to secondhand smoke.

A report from the California Environmental Protection Agency in 2005 concluded that the evidence regarding secondhand smoke and breast cancer is "consistent with a causal association" in younger, mainly premenopausal women. The 2006 US Surgeon General's report, The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke, concluded that there is "suggestive but not sufficient" evidence of a link at this point. In any case, women should be told that this possible link to breast cancer is yet another reason to avoid contact with secondhand smoke.

The 2006 US Surgeon General's report reached several important conclusions:

Secondhand smoke causes premature death and disease in children and in adults who do not smoke.

Children exposed to secondhand smoke are at an increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), acute respiratory infections, ear problems, and more severe asthma. Smoking by parents causes breathing (respiratory) symptoms and slows lung growth in their children.

Secondhand smoke immediately affects the heart and blood circulation in a harmful way. It also causes heart disease and lung cancer.

The scientific evidence shows that there is no "safe" level of exposure to secondhand smoke.

Many millions of Americans, both children and adults, are still exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes and workplaces despite a great deal of progress in tobacco control.

The only way to fully protect non-smokers from exposure to secondhand smoke indoors is to prevent all smoking in that indoor space or building. Separating smokers from non-smokers, cleaning the air, and ventilating buildings cannot keep non-smokers from being exposed to secondhand smoke.

Where Is Secondhand Smoke a Problem?

There are 3 locations where you should be especially concerned about exposure to secondhand smoke:

Your Workplace

The workplace is a major source of secondhand smoke exposure for adults. Secondhand smoke meets the criteria to be classified as a potential cancer-causing agent by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency responsible for health and safety regulations in the workplace. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), another federal agency, also recommends that secondhand smoke be considered a potential occupational carcinogen. Because there are no known safe levels, they recommend that exposures to secondhand smoke be reduced to the lowest possible levels.

Secondhand smoke exposure in the workplace has been linked to an increased risk for heart disease and lung cancer among adult non-smokers. The Surgeon General has concluded that smoke-free workplace policies are the only effective way to do away with secondhand smoke exposure in the workplace. Separating smokers from non-smokers, cleaning the air, and ventilating the building cannot prevent exposure if people smoke inside the building. Aside from protecting non-smokers, workplace smoking restrictions may also encourage smokers who wish to quit or reduce their use of tobacco products.

Public Places

Everyone can be exposed to secondhand smoke in public places, such as restaurants, shopping centers, public transportation, schools, and daycare centers. Although some businesses are reluctant to ban smoking, there is no credible evidence that going smoke-free is bad for business. Public places where children go are a special area of concern.

Your Home

Making your home smoke-free may be one of the most important things you can do for the health of your family. Any family member can develop health problems related to secondhand smoke. Children are especially sensitive. In the United States, 21 million, or 35% of children live in homes where residents or visitors smoke in the home on a regular basis. About 50% to 75% of children in the United States have detectable levels of cotinine, the breakdown product of nicotine, in their blood.

Think about it: we spend more time at home than anywhere else. A smoke-free home protects your family, your guests, and even your pets.

What About Smoking Odors?

There is no research in the medical literature about the cancer-causing effects of cigarette odors. The literature does show that secondhand tobacco smoke can get into hair, clothing, and other surfaces. Though unknown, the cancer-causing effects would likely be very small compared to direct exposure to secondhand smoke, such as living in a house with a smoker.

What Can Be Done About Secondhand Smoke?

Local, state, and federal authorities can enact public policies to protect people from secondhand smoke and protect children from tobacco-caused diseases and addiction. Because there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke, it is important that any such policies be as strong as possible, and that they do not prevent action at other levels of government.

Many US local and state governments, and even federal governments in some other countries, have decided that protecting the health of employees and others in public places is of the utmost importance. And many have passed clean indoor air laws in recent years. While the laws vary from place to place, they are becoming more common. Detailed information on smoking restrictions in each state is available from the American Lung Association at http://slati.lungusa.org.

To learn how you can become involved in reducing exposure to secondhand smoke, contact your American Cancer Society at 1-800-ACS-2345 (1-800-227-2345).

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/...sp?sitearea=PED

[kirchzep27]

I dont get your point either. i bet you used to smoke...right?