Smokeout Day: Here Are Some Stats

Graphic: imgarcade.com

I’ve been bitching about cigarette smoking for nearly 35 years and have only been a “former smoker” for 20 of that. I knew even before I quit that it was killing me, but funny thing about addictions: they’re difficult to break. 

Took me nearly 22 years to quit drinking and more than that to stop smoking. But I did and a year into healing, my primary care physician looked into my eyes during a physical exam and said, in an astonished voice, “Your lungs are clear.”

The body has amazing healing powers. For the next 20 years, I was without even a touch of bronchitis, which I had tolerated nearly six months of every year as a smoker—smoking through the coughing. 

These days, I try to convince people with the logic of numbers to quit smoking or to avoid starting. That probably never works. If I say, “You stink,” to a smoker, or perhaps, “Your teeth are really yellow,” I think, it’s far more effective.

Still, I’m going to give you some stats from the American Cancer Society as the Great American Smokeout approaches. They will get your attention, I think, though my guess is smokers will simply blow a smoke ring at them. Here they are:

•  Nearly half a million (480,000) Americans are killed every year by smoking and second-hand smoke. The worldwide numbers—which I don’t have—would dwarf that. Eighty-seven percent of lung cancer deaths are smoking related.
• There remain 42 million Americans who smoke cigarettes, 13.4 million who smoke cigars and  2.3 million who prefer pipe smoke.
• Non-smokers live 10 years longer than smokers. 
•           Low-income New Yorkers spend 25 percent of their income on cigarettes. 
  • There are 7,000 chemicals and compounds in tobacco and 69 of them have been found to cause cancer.
• Every day, 3,200 American children smoke their first cigarette.