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Smoking is responsible for 87% of all lung cancer deaths and 30% of all deaths from cancer.

• You will live an average of 15 years longer if you don't smoke.
• People who live with smokers have a greater chance of getting cancer even if they don't smoke themselves.
• Babies who are born to smoking mothers are at a higher risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
• Children of smoking parents are hospitalized more often for asthma, bronchitis and pneumonia than children of nonsmokers.
• Tobacco contains 40 known cancer-causing substances (carcinogens).
• Chewing tobacco and snuff are just as addictive as cigarettes and can cause cancer of the mouth and throat at a young age.
• In addition to lung cancer, smoking is linked to cancers of the mouth, larynx, esophagus, bladder, pancreas, kidney, and cervix.
• Tobacco use also increases the risk for middle ear infections, chronic bronchitis, heart disease, emphysema, and ulcers.
• About 3 million teenagers are smokers.
• Tobacco addictions that develop at a young age are the hardest to break.
• Although the 1998 legal settlement between the states and the tobacco companies prohibited the tobacco companies from taking “any action, directly or indirectly, to target youth…in the advertising, promotion or marketing of tobacco products”, by 2008, tobacco companies have increased the amount of money they spend on marketing to approximately $41.5 million a DAY, much of which is still targeting kids and youth. The tobacco industry’s new tactics include the use of hip-hop music, themes, and pictures with particular appeal to African-American youth and the introduction of candy-flavored cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.
• About 2,000 teens start smoking everyday. Almost 90% of adult smokers began smoking before the age of 18.
• Tobacco will kill 50% of every young person who stars smoking early and keeps it up. 25% of them will die in middle age, cutting off about 22 years of their lives.
• In as little as 2 weeks nicotine changes the brains chemistry and addiction can begin.
• Every year, 95% of people who try to stop smoking are not successful.

Smokeless Tobacco

Many people know the risks of smoking tobacco, but the same people do not always understand that using smokeless tobacco is also very risky. Smokeless tobacco comes in two forms: snuff and chewing tobacco. Snuff is shredded or finely ground tobacco that is placed between the gum and cheek or can be sniffed through the nose.

Chewing tobacco is stuffed inside the cheek or lip. Chewing tobacco and snuff contain many known carcinogens, or cancer-causing substances.  Some of these carcinogens include formaldehyde and nitrosamines (TSNs).  TSNs bind to the DNA of cells and cause mutations. TSNs are found in all forms of tobacco products.

Virtually all oral cancers are squamous cell carcinomas. The most common problem for smokeless tobacco users is leukoplakia, a precancerous oral lesion of the soft tissue in the mouth .