The Problem
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. Of the world's 1.2 billion smokers, the world health Organization estimates that 500 million of them will die because of smoking. This means that 9% of people now alive will die from cigarettes.
In most cases, the decision to smoke is not made by adults. Sixty percent of smokers start by the age of 14, and 90% of smokers are firmly addicted before reaching age 19. Stated another way, only one in ten smokers become addicted after the age of 19. So, almost no one starts smoking after 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.
M I S S I O N
Smokefree America's mission is to motivate youth to stay tobaccofree, and to empower smokers to quit.
The goals of the Foundation are:
To establish in-house programs to fight tobacco use at the local, regional and national levels
To prevent youth smoking through our websites and school-based educational programs
To help empower those suffering from tobacco addiction to quit successfully, through our websites and other educational venues
To enact peer teaching programs, empowering youth to defend themselves against the onslaught of advertising and peer pressure
To implement programs to remind physicians to take a proactive role with their smoking patients, intervening and asking them to quit
If you have tried to quit smoking and failed before, take comfort in the fact that most smokers failseveral times before quitting successfully. Your past failures are not a lesson that you are unable to quit. Instead, view them as part of the normal journey toward becoming a nonsmoker.
The information below will ease your way and help insure that this is the last time you ever need to go through the quitting process. You can do it!
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The most important step to take is the first step --
admitting you have an addiction.
When asked why you smoke, you might have said, "I just like to smoke!" or "It's my choice to smoke."
The tobacco companies have promoted the idea that smoking is a matter of personal choice. As I see it, there really isn't as much choice as they have suggested to their customers.
Ask yourself, and be totally honest: Am I addicted to tobacco? Am I truly making a freely made choice when I smoke?
You might consider that you need to have a cigarette. Studies have shown that nicotine addiction is as hard to break as heroin or cocaine addiction.
