5 Reasons to Quit Smoking NOW

It’s common knowledge that smoking is bad for you. Shocking, even horrifying pictures of what smoking can do to your body are placed strategically on packs of cigarettes in an effort to encourage people to quit, and the price of cigarettes is constantly being increased. Yet according to the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey, about 5.3 million Canadians aged 15 and over were current smokers in 2003.

If you’ve never been a smoker, or have quit successfully, our hats go off to you—but if you’re still stepping out for that cigarette break, we’ve got some facts and stats to give you an extra nudge towards quitting for good.

Reason #1: Tobacco kills an estimated 45,000 Canadians every year.
This number is higher than the number of deaths caused by AIDS, car accidents, suicide, murder, fires and accidental poisonings combined.

Reason #2: Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals.
These include carbon monoxide (what comes out of the car exhaust), arsenic (rat poison), ammonia (found in many window cleaners), naphthalene (used in mothballs), lead, formaldehyde, and butane.

A smoker who goes through one pack a day will smoke 7,300 cigarettes a year, inhaling the equivalent of nearly 1 gram of formaldehyde (yikes!).

Reason #3: Smoking puts you at risk for lung cancer… among other things.
It’s a known fact: smoking puts you at risk for developing lung cancer. But did you know it also puts you at a higher risk of developing pancreas, breast, cervical, stomach, kidney, and bladder cancer, as well as leukemia, coronary heart disease, circulatory, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, tooth decay, gum disease, osteoporosis and cataracts?

Reason #4: It’s not only about you.
Second hand smoke exposure is the number two cause of lung cancer (the number one cause being smoking), which means that by smoking you’re not only putting yourself in danger, but also the people around you and your loved ones.

Reason #5: It’s never too late to quit.
Within eight hours of not having smoked, carbon monoxide levels decrease, and the oxygen levels in your blood increase. After having quit for two days, your sense of taste and smell start to improve. Between two weeks and three months after having quit, your lungs work better, making it a lot easier to do a vital action: breathe. And only one year after having quit, your risk of having a smoking-related heart attack is reduced by half.