|| World No Tobacco Day || Day 7 on Page 5 - Page 3

From being a principle cause of cancer to increasing your chances of heart diseases, there are a lot of reasons why smoking should be given up on.

The long term effects on the health can be devastating but the impact on your body starts sooner than you think.

In fact it starts the moment you put that bit of cigarette in between your lips. Within 10 seconds, your brain will start swimming in a pool of nicotine.

Smoking is said to stimulate pleasing and enjoyable emotions, and smokers claim that it helps boost their mood, alleviates minor depressions and short fits of anger. It improves concentration and short-term memory, and can also provide a modest sense of well-being.

This instant hit that smokers get isn't all psychological. This is because cigarettes contain the addictive drug nicotine that stimulates the dopamine in the brain, which is responsible for all the "pleasurable sensations."

Your lungs' ability to clean themselves is immediately impaired. It's not just because you're sucking in tar. Your lungs clean themselves with tiny hair called cilia which line the windpipe and sweep out all the dirt and mucous up to you throat when you swallow which, from your first puff, the action of the cilia slows down. In fact, researches prove that one cigarette is enough to slow down the movement for hours together!

So the bacteria doesn't clean up as efficiently as it usually does, making you prone to diseases.

Your blood vessels become constricted due to smoking which can act negatively in your body. This causes an increase in the blood pressure, though it drops in 20 minutes. But, in the long term, this can make your heart weak, as it takes more effort to pump blood around the body.

Your heart gets all the oxygen to your organs for them to function. Carbon-dioxide is one of the dangerous chemicals that enters the blood when you smoke, replacing the gas thus making the heart pump harder to get the blood around the body. A lower supply of oxygen to the brains can result in headaches, mood changes and panic attacks.

Smoking can result in premature ageing and also make your skin look dull. This process starts as soon as you start inhaling the smoke! The smoke dries out the skin's surface. Also, as the amount of blood flowing to the skin is limited by constricting the blood vessels, the skin is deprived of oxygen and other essential nutrients. If you're smoking a cigarette, sorry. You are no longer going to remain young and fresh.

Lastly, it will almost be 8 hours before the carbon monoxide starts leaving your body. This means the effects on your body will last for the day, despite what your nicotine cravings tell you.

Give it a couple of years, you'll be beside yourself. Literally, that is.

So if at all staying healthy is in your list, keep far away from smoking.

Smoking causes one in five deaths in the US every year!

Nicotine is as addictive as heroin and cocaine.

A single cigarette contains about 4800 chemicals of which, 69 are known to cause cancer.

In the face of all threats to health issued by tobacco consumption you'd wonder why the industry is still thriving, especially when one of the major methods of controlling it has been the price hikes and bans on advertisement.

The tobacco industry is monopolized by a handful of companies. In India the major company is ITC (Indian Tobacco Company), while internationally the market is dominated by Marlboro.

Since there are few players in the production market and tobacco is a smoker's necessity, they often flout the safety norms of production and charge inappropriately high prices for their products.

According to the Universal Law of Demands, when the price is higher for a product, its demand goes down.

Tobacco is one of the exceptions.

Most smokers, having started on tobacco early in life, are already addicted to it by the time they are economically able to afford the better brands. The difficult addiction and better taste make it harder for them who wish to quit.

These people continue to buy cigarettes and other tobacco products from the various manufacturers despite odd prices. Basically these companies create demand' to meet their supply' and procure the gains.

Adolescents and teens are presumed to live longer than adults. This assumption is exploited thoroughly by the tobacco-manufacturing companies that target the younger part of the population through their promotions to accrue their profits.

Also, their marketing strategies often extend to women who they calculate to be "untapped market where there is more potential to increase consumption than with men."

These companies also seek to expand their market to the developing countries. The lack of education in these parts of the world makes their task unimaginably effortless given the addictive powers of nicotine.

Imagine- "Smoking Kills" handed to a worker in a village beside the Thar.

So Jaago graahak jaago, and don't waste your money in tobacco. A truck kills you faster.

An average smoker in the US spends almost US$1500-US$3300 per year. (Rs.100,957.50-Rs.222,106.50)

If an average NYC smoker gave up smoking and instead invested the money in the SandP500, in 10 years he would have US$52000 (Rs.3,499,860).

In 2004, US$411000000 (Rs.27,668,704,950) was lost in income due to tobacco-related work absenteeism.