Everybody knows what cigarette smoking can do to our body just like everybody knows it is bad to kill but somehow they don’t connect the two together until they are hooked to it!!!

Nicotine, the drug in tobacco and cigarettes is the most addicting substance in the world and according to the American Heart Association, addiction to Nicotine has been the hardest to break. It is its powerful stimulant effect that makes it highly addicting.

Nicotine content of an average cigarette is 1 mg but due to tolerance there is a need to increase the dose to get the desired stimulant effect. Nicotine content of all popular American brands of cigarettes are slowly increasing over the years, an average of 1.78% per yr. between 1998 and 2005. In higher doses, Nicotine is highly toxic which makes it a potent insecticide. As an insecticide it is hazardous to the farmers, child laborers and animals, the reason it is banned in America today.

Use of fl ue-cured tobacco is one of the principal reasons smoking causes lung cancer and other diseases associated with smoke inhalation.

Smoking as an activity is practiced by 1.22 Billion people, up to 1/3 of the earth’s adult population causing 5.4 million deaths per year.

The only country in the world where smoking is illegal is in Bhutan which was rated as the happiest country in Asia and the 8th happiest in the world, based on a global survey by Business Week.

Smoking rate in USA has dropped by half from 1965 to 2006, 40% to 20.8%.Changes are partly due to: In developing world, consumption is rising by 3.4 % per yearr., smoked by poor more likely than the rich and in developing more than in developed

countries. In Indonesia, the lowest income population spends 15 % of total expenditures on tobacco.

China is the world’s top manufacturer of cigarette, 2.4 Trillion per year, 20% of the world’s total, followed by Brazil and the US. Philippines is a minor producer, Fortune Tobacco, 67% of market shares and La Suerte Cigar, 25%. Marlboro brand is the 2nd cheapest in all Asean nations.

To illustrate how smoking kills, the Environmental Protection Agency engineers have shown that even the best available ventilation and air moving equipment were unable to reduce cancer causing elements to make the air we breath safe.

Smoking causes 4 times more deaths every year compared to all other drugs and alcohol abuse combined, 10 times more deaths caused by all automobile accidents per year, 12 times more than AIDS and much more than all American Military casualties in all wars in this century put together.

US is manufacturing Genetically Modifi ed (GM) tobacco with the brand name, Quest. It tastes and smokes like any other cigarette but is virtually nicotine free but the addicting effect remains.

Killing Me Softly: Hazards of Smoking

28 TALK OF THE TOWN VOL. 2 NO. 2