It is estimated that 1 in 3 adults worldwide are smokers.
It is estimated that there are 1 billion male smokers and 250 million female smokers worldwide - the number of female smokers is increasing.
Worldwide, more than 15 billion cigarettes are smoked every day! Portugal, unlike other industrialized countries, saw cigarette consumption increase between 1981 and 1991 by more than 10%.
Most smokers started in adolescence; half of young people who maintain smoking habits will die from smoking-related illnesses.
Tobacco smoke contains more than 4,000 chemical compounds - of these 60 are potentially cancer-causing. In addition to acetone, tobacco smoke contains carbon monoxide (present in car exhaust gases), DDT (insecticide), methanol (fuel), toluene (industrial solvent), naphthalene (present in "naphthalene balls"), cadmium (constituent of car batteries), butane (fuel from lighters), etc.
Dependence arises due to nicotine, which is a substance that naturally exists in the tobacco plant.
Nicotine has a 3x higher add-on potential than cocaine.
What are the health consequences of tobacco use?
Tobacco is responsible for:
- 90% of all lung cancers
- 75% of chronic bronchitis and pulmonary emphysema
- 25% of ischemic heart diseases
Because when a pregnant woman smokes she is putting her health and that of her baby at risk. There is an increased risk of miscarriage and premature birth, low weight of the fetus and newborn and sudden infant death.
The mortality associated with tobacco consumption has been increasing sharply. Thus, while in 1950 tobacco consumption was responsible for 300,000 deaths worldwide, in 1975 the number of deaths due to tobacco was over 1 million and in 2000 it is thought that 5 million deaths were due to tobacco consumption.
For 2025 the estimate is 10 million deaths due to tobacco consumption (most of which are in the least developed countries).
Because in addition to our health we are endangering the health of others - according to WHO, the risk of lung cancer in non-smokers exposed to tobacco smoke ("passive smokers") is 20 to 30% higher to those not exposed.
The advantages are immediate and the greater the longer we are without smoking. Thus, just 1 day is enough to improve blood pressure. If a smoker is 1 year without smoking it reduces the excess risk of heart attack by half; if you are 5 years without smoking the risk of stroke becomes the same as that of non-smokers; if you are 10 years without smoking the risk of lung cancer is halved; if you are 15 years old without smoking the risk of heart attack and death becomes identical to that of non-smokers.
