Damage is worse than thought
Think about all the tar and nicotine you are coating your lungs with. Damage from smoking much worse than we thought.
Some police associations may offer “stop smoking” programs for members.
The latest Surgeon General’s report on the health effects of smoking offers astonishing new evidence of just how much harm tobacco is causing. It turns out that cigarette smoking kills even more Americans than previously estimated (about 480,000 a year, up from 443,000), and is a cause, though not necessarily the major cause, of even more diseases than previously recognized, including liver and colorectal cancers. These add to the long list of other cancers caused by smoking, as well as rheumatoid arthritis and other ailments. The report newly identifies exposure to secondhand smoke as a cause of strokes.
Most shocking, the report finds that today’s smokers have a much higher risk for lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than smokers in 1964, despite smoking fewer cigarettes. It reports that the risk of developing adenocarcinoma of the lung, the most common type of lung cancer, has increased substantially over the past several decades because of changes in the design and composition of cigarettes. These include ventilated filters that lead to more puffing of noxious materials and blended tobaccos that contain carcinogenic nitrosamines.
There is no doubt who is to blame for this mess, the report says. It is the tobacco industry, which “aggressively markets and promotes lethal and addictive products,” continues to recruit youth and young adults as new customers, and has “deliberately misled the public on the risks of smoking cigarettes.”
The new report rightly calls for more vigorous tobacco-control efforts, including an increase in cigarette taxes to drive up the average price of cigarettes to at least $10 a pack to prevent young people from starting to smoke; an antismoking mass media campaign by government agencies that would run year-round; and new rules extending smoke-free indoor protection to the entire population, double the current level. The goal is to reduce the smoking rate from the current 18 percent to less than 10 percent in 10 years.
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