Why do people want to hurt themselves? Millions of people each day light up a cigarette knowing the consequences. Smoking is a dangerous, costly, and often life threatening habit but the only way to warn others about smoking is by warning them about the effects.
When you smoke a cigarette it contains nicotine, an addictive drug, and more than 4,000 chemical compounds including at least 43 cancer causing compounds. (Surgery Door.) Tar, carbon monoxide, benzene, formaldehyde, ammonia and arsenic are just a tiny portion of the dangerous chemicals added to just one little cigarette. (Surgery Door.) In some cases nicotine has been used to kill insects! (Kids Health.) Do you really want something that dangerous in your body?
Smoking is divided into two categories: Active and Passive. Both cause tremendous amounts of diseases. The least significant effect that most smokers experience is “smokers cough”. Although “smokers cough” is not deadly, it is very painful and disgusting to others. It usually occurs early in the morning, because the smoker’s lungs are trying to cough up some of the harmful substances that have built up from the previous day of smoking. (McMillon, 15.) The three most common diseases found among

(Life Skills, 6.) Adolescents use smoking as an experiment, they view smoking as an activity they can participate in with a group of friends as a form of bonding. (McMillon, 73.) Most people begin smoking because their parents, friends, or older siblings smoke and most girls think smoking will increase their appetite, enhance their attractiveness or they think it will make them appear more mature to older guys. (Surgery Door.) When all they are doing is committing suicide.

among active smokers are lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. (Life Skills, 4.) Other diseases include Prostate cancer, Breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, reproductive health complications, gastric ulcers, diabetes, and many more. (Quit.) Smoking greatly effects pregnant women. Smoking by a pregnant women may result in fetal injury, premature birth, low birth weight, or even a miscarriage. (Life Skills, 11.) Nicotine is also been found in the breast milk of women who smoke. (Life Skills, 11.) Experts estimate that women who smoke twenty cigarettes a day through adulthood will have reduces their bone density by around five to ten percent by the time they have reached menopause, which usually occurs one to two years earlier in women who smoke. (Quit.) Smoking shortens life expectancy more than you would think. Men who smoke two or more packs of cigarettes a day cut their life expectancy fourteen to fifteen years