A couple of years back, everyone thought it was cool to smoke in public. Some people even implied that smoking helped you get an edge on your peers by giving you an air of confidence when puffing away. With a cigarette you were the one everyone wanted to be like in your circle of friends. It was believed that the opposite sex was supposedly more attracted to you, if you were fashionably smoking away. Smoking is believed by some to make the man more virile.
Even though you might wonder why everything that is perceived as cool is linked with virility, let’s focus on this whole cigarette business and how it has practically brought mankind to its knees. A globally conducted survey statistically reveals facts about smoking and its harmful effects on the body. The study compared the impact of the damage causing deaths to smokers like the destruction of those who died in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in Japan.
Right now, scientists label smoking as the largest preventable cause of premature diseases and early death. Every minute, one in fifteen adults is dying of lung cancer. This is attributed to the addictive nature of smoking, resulting in an annual four million deaths (this is an approximate figure). Tobacco usage pertains to not only smoking, but also chewing betel leaves and inhaling deadly snuff. But still in spite of these facts it is worth noticing that approximately 15 billion cigarettes are sold daily. That is a HUGE figure! Who smokes that much and WHY?
