A good time to quit smoking is May 31st World No Tobacco Day

INTERNATIONAL
MAY 30, 2013
BY: JACK DENNIS


May 31st is No Tobacco Day
Credits:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention




The World Health Organization has designated May 31st each year as World No Tobacco Day.

RELATED TOPICS
International
smoking
cancer
lungs
Asthma
breathing




This annual day-long observation serves to highlight the health risks associated with tobacco use and to advocate for effective policies in reducing tobacco consumption.

Besides health, the cost of cigarettes is a primary reason more Americans are quitting tobacco products.

A person who buys one pack a day (the cost in Texas), in one month they spent $168, or an annual cost of $2,184. If the cost of a pack remained the same over ten years, that pack of day would add up to $21,840.

Smoking is the single most preventable cause of death and disease. Cigarettes cause more deaths than cocaine, auto accidents, AIDS, alcohol, heroin, fire, suicide and homicide combined.

The costs to our society include over 400,000 lives lost every year in the U.S.-- over 1200 each day -- and $50 billion annually in lost productivity and increased health care costs.

“Worldwide, the toll exacted by tobacco use is two to three million deaths each year,” indicates the World Health Organization. “Of the world's 1.2 billion smokers, 500 million of them will die because of smoking. This means that 9% of people now alive will die from cigarettes.”

Sixty percent of smokers start by the age of 14, and 90% of smokers are firmly addicted before reaching age 19.

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop alerted the nation that nicotine is as addictive as heroin or cocaine. Yet tobacco companies have been spending over $4 billion annually on advertising, or $15 annually for every man, woman, and child in the country.

Because of health problems associated with cigarette smoking, several nations have passed a ban on cigarette advertising. But in the US, the Congress legislated no significant change in this area in the past 30 years.

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