• Over the past 4 decades, cigarette smoking has caused an estimated 12 million deaths, including 4.1 million deaths from cancer, 5.5 million deaths from cardiovascular diseases, 2.1 million deaths from respiratory diseases, and 94,000 infant deaths related to mothers smoking during pregnancy.
• Cigarette smoking causes an estimated 438,000 deaths, or about 1 of every 5 deaths, each year.
• Approximately 28,700 adult Floridians die each year from smoking.
• Smoking kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs, murders, and suicides combined.
• Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of death in the United States, causing heart and lung diseases, cancers, and strokes.
• On average, male smokers die 13.2 years earlier than male nonsmokers and female smokers die 14.5 years earlier than female nonsmokers.
• Smoking causes coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. Cigarette smokers are 2-4 times more likely to develop coronary heart disease than nonsmokers.Smoking is prevalent in Florida:
• Approximately 3 million of adults in Florida smoke, or 21% of the state’s population.
• Smoking prevalence among adults has not changed in ten years. Nearly one out of every five adults in Florida smokes.

Cigarettes contain harmful chemicals:
• There are 4,000 harmful chemicals in tobacco and 50+ known components that are responsible for causing cancer.
• Other poisons in tobacco include arsenic, cyanide, formaldehyde which is used to preserve bodies, and ammonia bromide which is the main agent used in toilet cleaner.

Smoking impairs the body’s ability to function:
• Your body contains almost 100,000 miles of blood vessels. Smoking constricts those vessels, depriving your body of the important fresh, rich oxygen it needs.
• Cataracts, cancer, angina, arteriosclerosis, osteoporosis, chronic bronchitis, high blood pressure, impotence, and respiratory ailments are linked to smoking.
• Smoking slows lung growth, decreases lung function, and reduces the oxygen available for muscles used in sports.
• Smokers suffer from shortness of breath almost 3 times more often than nonsmokers.

Quitting smoking benefits your health:
• The excess risk of developing heart disease as a result of smoking may be reduced by as much as half in the first year or two after quitting.
• Five to 15 years after quitting, the risk of stroke returns to the level of those who have never smoked.
• Quitting reduces the risk of dying from lung cancer; 10 years after quitting the risk for lung cancer is 30% to 50% that of the risk of those who continue to smoke.
Smoking is costly:
• Cigarette smoking is estimated to be responsible for $167 billion in annual health-
related economic losses in the United States ($75 billion in direct medical costs,
and $92 billion in lost productivity), or about $3,561 per adult smoker.
• The total economic costs associated with cigarette smoking are estimated at $7.18 per pack of cigarettes sold in the United States.
• Cigarette smoking results in 5.5 million years of potential life lost in the United States annually.

Source: Centers for Disease Control & Prevention