Today over one billion people around the world are smokers—a fact that transcends race, spans the spectrum of age and social status, and that penetrates all corners of culture.
No matter how much it is romanticized on television or through media (for good or for bad), the truth falls out in the statistics: tobacco kills 20 times more people than murder does; cigarettes contain almost 5,000 different chemicals, some of which come out of vehicle exhaust pipes; 1 in every 5 pregnant women smokes. It is an undoubted fact that smoking is bad for your health, but what does that really mean? And why is smoking still the leading cause of preventable death in the United States?
Opinions are divided about how to approach the issue, especially in America. Smoker’s rights advocates continue to pursue “equality,” and very recently a group of these advocates sued New York State in hopes of removing no-smoking signs at public parks.
Conversely, a wave of anti-smoking sentiment is trending among collegiate leaders: as of January 1st, 2013, the University of Mississippi’s Oxford campus is set to become smoke-free—that is, smoking will be prohibited every hour, every day, anywhere on campus. Florida International University has enacted a campus tobacco ban. And Stanford University’s Medical School. And Taylor University. And over 750 other universities in the U.S. In Iowa, smoking is completely banned in all public places.
Governments and universities often justify these bans by citing a wealth of research on second-hand smoke, which kills 50,000 people every year by exacerbating or triggering lung cancer and heart disease. The inherent addictive characteristics of nicotine, fused with cunning business tactics, are often blamed for the perpetuation and proliferation of smoking worldwide. Philip Morris generates more revenue than McDonald’s and Nike, and while smoking lobbyists work behind out of sight, advertisements flood the media and help mold impressionable youth—like the 1,000 people under the age of 18 who start smoking every day.
A quarter of all high school students smoke, 80% of which will continue into adulthood, and half of which will die more than a decade earlier than their peers. The facts are very real, and this infographic explores why—if you’re a smoker—you might want to consider nursing your lungs back to where they were meant to be.
