The first experience of smoking a cigarette is equivalent to swallowing someone's dirty socks. The insanity is that even after this horrible introduction, millions of people discipline themselves into growing a solid addiction.

Tobacco contributes to 30 percent of all cancers. Cigarettes cause lung cancer which has a one out of ten survival rate. Lung cancer is the leading cause of all cancer related deaths. This type of cancer is particularly dangerous because it quickly spreads to other organs of the body before it is detected. Tobacco has been shown to cause cancer of the lips, larynx, and bladder.

A burning cigarette contains over two hundred poisonous substances that are carried by the blood to every cell in the body. Cigarettes advance aging of the skin. Nicotine binds white blood cells, increasing the chance of infections. Shellac, acetone, turpentine, acetaldehyde, and glyoxal are common cigarette additives, some of which have caused cancer in animals.

Researchers have found that a burning cigarette releases radioactive polonium. Polonium metal is vaporized by heat and sucked into the lungs, where it is deposited. Smoking one and a half packs per day exposes the lungs to 8,000 millirems per year (Science, December 1984). This is greater than any other radiation source. Scientist Dennis O' Dowd says that your exposure could be several times greater than living next door to a nuclear reactor.

If you smoke two packs a day you will shorten your life span by eight years. Smoking one to nine cigarettes per day can shorten your life span by four years. Smoking one pack a day for one year, will deposit a quart of sticky, toxin-laden tar into the delicate air sacs that make up the lungs. Years of smoking causes the lungs to lose their ability to cleanse; the smoker develops a hackers cough that further irritates the lungs. Emphysema has been linked to smoking. The victims of this disease die a slow agonizing death by suffocation.