The dirt on smoking
HEALTH
If you start smoking cigarettes as a teenager and smoke until your 50s there is a 50% chance that you will die from a tobacco related illness. Over 15,000 people die in Australia each year from active and passive smoking.
Many people think of lung cancer as the only disease associated with smoking, but the fact is that smoking causes disease in nearly every organ of the body. It is a direct cause of 11 cancers, causes heart disease, stroke, peripheral vascular disease (narrowing of the leg arteries that can lead to amputation), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (a disease of the airways) and emphysema. Smoking is also associated with macular degeneration (blindness), osteoporosis, asthma, lowered fertility and periodontal disease (tooth and gum disease).
Inhaling other peoples’ smoke (second-hand smoke) increases the risk of lung cancer, heart disease, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), asthma, lower respiratory illness, (like bronchitis and pneumonia) middle ear infections among children and low birth weight babies.
The good news is that smoking is on the decline in Australia. Less than a quarter of adults smoke in NSW. An estimated 10% of smokers have quit in the last 2 years bringing the current rate down to its lowest ever. 17.7 % of people aged 16 and above reported daily or occasional smoking in 2006.
We shouldn’t start celebrating yet though. In NSW over 6,500 deaths were caused by smoking in 2004 with 55,000 hospital visits as a result of tobacco related illness. This costs the government $178 million each year.
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HEALTH
Download the following factsheets from the Oxygen website:
- What’s in a cigarette?
http://www.oxygen.org.au/images/upload/Whats in a Cigarette.1.pdf
- What You Smoke B-I-N-G-O
File://hercules/users/cchd2/WhatYouSmokeBINGO.htm
- What one cigarette does
http://www.oxygen.org.au/images/upload/What One Cigarette Does.pdf
STATISTICS
GENERAL INFORMATION
MEDIA CAMPAIGNS
HELP TO QUIT SMOKING
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MYTH: Everybody smokes
About 1 in 5 people in Australia smoke
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Legislation