5 Nicotine Addiction Facts that You Might Not Know

Don’t let nicotine addiction take your life.

Nicotine is a chemical that is widely found in tobacco and which is the primary cause of addiction for people who smoke. Most tobacco plants contain somewhere between one half of a percent and three percent nicotine which is why cigarettes and other tobacco products are so addictive. If you’re a smoker or you know a smoker, consider these nicotine addiction facts and you just may make the decision to quit sooner than you planned!

 Smoking Kills

Alright, you probably already knew that smoking can kill you but did you know that nicotine addiction results in more than 430,000 American deaths each year? Nicotine addiction is more deadly than heroin addiction, cocaine addiction, alcohol addiction and car accidents combined. More people die each year from smoking related causes than those who die from fire, AIDS and homicide as well as the above stated addictions.

Not only does smoking kill people who smoke, nicotine addiction is responsible for causing people to go to great lengths to smoke even in public places. Second hand smoke causes more than 50K deaths in America alone each year and these deaths occur in people who have nothing to do with the decision to smoke, who don’t smoke and who don’t want to smoke.

Cigarettes are Lethal

Did you know that a single cigarette contains more toxins than arsenic? The chemicals that are found in cigarettes are deadly! In fact, cigarettes contain arsenic, similar chemicals to those found in varnish and insecticide. You wouldn’t smoke insecticide would you? Probably not, yet people smoke cigarettes which have the same lethal chemicals in them every single day without even thinking twice about the situation.

Smoking Increases Health Care Costs

Did you know that cigarette smoking accounts for nearly 10% of all health care costs in the United States? In fact, cigarette smoking and nicotine addiction are the reason why so many people get sick, it’s the reason why health insurance premiums are so high and it’s the reason why American’s accumulate more than $50 billion in annual health care costs.

Smoking Causes Cancer

You already know that smoking causes lung cancer but did you know that smoking can cause throat cancer? Did you know that smoking causes mouth cancer? Did you know that smoking can cause a number of other cancers including cervical cancer, pancreatic cancer and cancer of the bladder? Smoking is the leading cause of cancer and also the most preventable cause of cancer in the United States. Millions of cases of cancer can be prevented with abstinence from cigarette smoking.

Nicotine Addiction is Immediate

We’ve all heard things about how heroin causes an almost immediate physical dependence and how other drugs cause this immediate dependence but most people know nothing about how quickly nicotine addiction can occur. Nicotine addiction can begin to set in after a single instance of smoking a cigarette. People who smoke have an immediately diminished control over their actions as a result of the addiction. After smoking three or four times, the smoker is 35% more likely to become addicted.