Smoking Kills...
                           Smoking Injures...
                           Smoking Pollutes...
                           Smoking Deforests...
                           Smoking is Toxic...
                           Smoking Stinks...
                           Smoking is Inefficient...
                           Smoking is Ugly...
                           Smoking is Reactionary...        
                           Smoking Causes Fires...
                           Smoking is Selfish...

 

Smoking  Is  Cruel  &  Uncool

“We can no longer ignore the one place where the answer is so simple:
reducing smoking. Other solutions are no solution at all.”
Source: “The Economic Costs of Smoking in the US and the Benefits of Comprehensive Tobacco Legislation”

This web page is located at www.brook.com/smoke.
 
Also check out CyberBrook’s ThinkLinks
 
Thanks for visiting …
 
If you would like to make a donation,
please click here.
! Thank You !
Any amount would be appreciated!

For information in Spanish / EspaZol, start here:

Tabaquismo y Salud: Materialiales y Publicaciones en EspaZol

Smoking kills over 430,000 smokers (equivalent to one Oakland, CA)
and over 53,000 non-smokers (equivalent to almost one entire Vietnam War for Americans)
in the US each year, with millions more dying around the world.

Smoking is a weapon of mass destruction and is one of our worst public health threats.                                  

“Tobacco use, particularly smoking, remains the number one cause of preventable
disease and death in the United States.”  Source: Reducing Tobacco Use: A Report of the
Surgeon General [Summary]

“Cigarettes kill more Americans than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, murders, suicides,
drugs and fires combined.” Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office on
Smoking and Health 

“Anyone who smokes is committing suicide slowly, one cigarette after the other.”
Source: Menachem Slae, Smoking and Damage to Health in the Halachah

 Cancerettes kill 

return to top of page

 Smoking Injures

Besides the smoker, who on average dies 13 years earlier, smoking hurts and kills the
friends and families of the smoker the most, including kids and pets, through second
hand smoke. While claiming to love, smokers are spewing hate every time they
light up.

Smoking is associated with:

Smoking afflicts both smokers and their loved ones.

Additionally, “cigarette filters have been found in the stomachs of fish, birds, whales”
and others, injuring and killing vast numbers of animals. 

“Smoking causes disease in nearly every organ in the body at every stage of life."
Source: U.S. Surgeon General’s Annual Report on Smoking

“There is no such thing as a safe tobacco product.”
Source: American Cancer Society

  return to top of page

 Smoking Pollutes

Smoking emits carbon, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and methane,
among other gases, contributing to global warming. The smoking industry’s use of certain
pesticides also contributes to the destruction of the Earth’s ozone layer, resulting in
increased radiation exposure and therefore grave “health problems such as skin cancer,
eye cataracts and suppression of the immune system”.

The 450 pesticides and herbicides approved for use on tobacco not only adversely
affect farm workers and their families, but spray-drift and run-off of these dangerous
chemicals pose serious risks to the environment, poisoning our air, water, and the
people and animals that depend on them.      
                                                                                                                  
“Cigarette and cigar making produces large quantities of waste in the form of
tobacco slurries, solvents, oils and greases, paper, wood, plastics, packaging
materials and airborne pollution - as well as toxic chemical waste.... From growing
the tobacco plant to disposal of butts and packaging, the whole life cycle of a
cigarette takes a heavy toll on the environment.”  Source: ASH,
“The Environmental Impacts of Tobacco”

  Smoking Deforests

The process of making cigarettes requires a lot of (non-renewable fossil) fuel, including
coal, oil, and wood, leading to the depletion of woodlands and forests, especially in
poorer countries. This is a critical problem, particularly in China, Brazil, India, and
throughout Africa. Tobacco kills forests.

“Once forest is cleared, soil erosion and flooding can result, thus damaging nearby
agricultural land.... Once soil fertility is lost, tobacco companies may simply move on
to new growing areas”, abandoning communities with the same lack of concern as
when they exploit and poison them. The tobacco industry also reduces precious
biodiversity, substituting it “with largely monoculture plantations of non-indigenous
species”, causing untold and irreparable harm to ecosystems and their inhabitants,
here and abroad.
 

In addition to containing beeswax, caffeine, prunes, milk products, wine, and yeast,
cigarettes and their smoke contain thousands of chemicals, plus nasty pesticide
residues, with at least 43 neurotoxic and cancer causing chemicals, including ammonia
(toilet bowl cleaner?), arsenic (rat poison?!), butane (lighter fluid), carbon monoxide
(poisonous gas), DDT (banned insecticide), formaldehyde (preserves dead bodies),
hydrogen cyanide (poison), methyl bromide (class-1 carcinogen), methyl isocyanate
(Bhopal culprit), napthalene (mothballs), cadmium, lead, benzene, malathion,
toxaphene, and other “highly toxic” and disgusting substances, plus radioactive
polonium 210, all with both short and long term consequences for people, animals,
and the rest of the environment. Many of these additives “spike” the tobacco,
strengthening the addictive power of cigars and cigarettes. The tobacco plants have
also been genetically engineered for the same slimy purposes of unnaturally and
secretly tricking people to become more dependent on buying and using these
dangerous & deadly products. 

  return to top of page

Smoke contains many chemicals and substances, causing bad breath, wrinkled skin,
stinky clothes, cars and homes, and increasingly polluted air. Combined with the
high costs of smoking, the fraudulent tricks and high profits of tobacco companies,
the masses of litter, and the high number of fires caused by cigarettes, it’s abundantly
clear that smoking, and the whole tobacco industry and smoking lifestyle, really stinks.

 

 
  Smoking is Inefficient

“The amount of land currently used to grow tobacco worldwide could instead be used
to feed 10 to 20 million people”. Smoking in the US also results in “an annual cost of
more than $50 billion in direct medical costs”, not including sick days taken, lost
productivity, smoke damage, and fires.

“Cigarettes may cost smokers more then they believe. A study by a team of health
economists finds the combined price paid by their families and society is about $40
per pack of cigarettes.” Further, the high cost that individuals spend on cigarettes,
despite US government subsidies to tobacco farmers, could be used for much more
healthy, more enjoyable, and more considerate and just activities.

“Concerned U.S. citizens should rightly question the sustainability and the sanity of
the tobacco industry, at home and abroad.”

“Currently, the death and disease caused by tobacco use costs the global economy
US $200 billion.”  Source:  US Dept of Health and Human Services, Tobacco: Global Effects
of Tobacco Use

Smoking looks ugly, stains teeth, is smelly, causes wrinkles, rasps the voice, blackens
the lungs, pollutes the air, ruins clothing and furniture, and creates bad aesthetics, while
butts, matches, and wrappers sully our parks, lakes, beaches, sidewalks and streets,
gardens, schools, and other public places.

Don’t be addicted to ugliness! “An estimated 4.5 trillion non-biodegradable cigarette
butts are littered worldwide every year.”

In fact, cigarettes are the most littered item in America and the world. 

Support for right-wing politicians, lying and fraud (they lied to the FDA and the Congress
and they lied to us), deception, spiking, pushing, addicting kids with cartoon characters,
greed, ads, PR, spin, suppressing scientific studies and evidence of cancer and other deadly connections: reactionary tobacco corporations have done all this and more. Cigarette
companies have known for decades that nicotine is addictive and that cigarettes cause
cancer, but they actively suppressed this information and lied about it, even when under
oath in Congress. Cigarette companies are guilty of scamming us in the worst way, by
making us pay for our own suffering. Say No to Joe Chemo, don’t be tricked by Phraud
Morris, and resist the Marlboro Mauling.                               
 
“I knew that the tobacco companies would gladly market a dangerous, addictive
product, and that they would use cartoon characters to aim their advertising
prowess at children, customers they hoped to one day hook. I knew that the
industry was willing to knowingly sell a consumer product that, when used as
directed, kills more than a third of its customers.

  return to top of page

Many house fires and forest fires are accidentally and recklessly started by cigarettes,
some of which turn out to be fatal to people and other animals. “Careless smoking is
estimated to be the number one cause of fire related death and injury in the nation.” 

Protect the forests, your friends, and yourself.  Stop smoking and
stamp it out!

Due to all of the above—it damages the environment, supports greedy and fraudulent
corporations, is dangerous, toxic, unhealthy, unpleasant, uncool, costly, inefficient,
stinky, and ugly—smoking is selfish and cruel. Tobacco companies manipulate
cigarettes; don’t let them manipulate you. Most people don’t smoke—and don’t like
or approve of the nuisance of smoking—and more and more people are quitting smoking
every day.

Join us. Kick the habit and stick it to the giant tobacco companies! You’ll
be doing yourself, your family, your friends, and the environment a really BIG favor. 

“To continue to smoke and put the health of your family and loved-ones at risk
would seem, on the face of it, to be a rather selfish act. When you take into account
the damage that smoking is doing to your own body then it seems more like insanity.
Think of how traumatic it would be if a member of your family became ill or died
because of your smoking habit. Now consider the fact that they would feel exactly
the same way if smoking ended your life prematurely or made you seriously ill.” 
Source: “Passive Smoking – What You Should Know”
 

Be Considerate!
  return to top of page

For more info against smoking, search the web or see the many links at:

Joe Chemo Smokin’ Links  &  TobaccoPedia

Also see:

Celebrities Against Smoking
Sports Initiatives
Smoker’s Lung: Pathology Photo Essay.

  return to top of page

Please send all other comments, concerns,
contributions, and constructive criticism to:
Vegnik@gmail.com