Smoking cigarettes has been identified as the most important source of preventable morbidity and premature mortality worldwide.
Smoking costs the United States over $167 billion each year in health-care costs including $92 billion in mortality-related productivity loses and $75.
5 billion in excess medical expenditures.
It is estimated that about 8.
6 million people in the U.
S.
have at least one serious illness caused by smoking.
Among current smokers, chronic lung disease accounts for 73 percent of smoking-related conditions.
Even among smokers who have quit chronic lung disease accounts for 50 percent of smoking-related conditions.
Smoking is also a major factor in coronary heart disease and stroke; may be causally related to malignancies in other parts of the body; and has been linked to a variety of other conditions and disorders, including slowed healing of wounds, infertility, and peptic ulcer disease.
In 2004, an estimated 44.
5 million, or 20.
9 percent of, adults were current smokers.
The annual prevalence of smoking has declined 40 percent between 1965 and 1990, but has been unchanged virtually thereafter.
Males tend to have significantly higher rates of smoking prevalence than females.
In 2004, 23.
4 percent of males currently smoked compared to 18.
5 percent of females.
Tobacco advertising also plays an important role in encouraging young people to begin a lifelong addiction to smoking before they are old enough to fully understand its long-term health risk.
Approximately 90 percent of smokers begin smoking before the age of 21.
In 2004, 22 percent of high school students were current smokers.
Over 8 percent of middle school students were current smokers in 2004.
Secondhand smoke involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers from other people's cigarettes is classified by the U.
S.
Environmental Protection Agency as a known human (Group A) carcinogen, responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in U.
S.
nonsmokers.
Workplaces nationwide are going smoke-free to provide clean indoor air and protect employees from the life-threatening effects of secondhand smoke.
Nearly 70 percent of the U.
S.
workforce worked under a smoke free policy in 1999, but the percentage of workers protected varies by state, ranging from a high of 83.
9 percent in Utah to 48.
7% in Nevada.
Employers have a legal right to restrict smoking in the workplace, or implement a totally smoke-free workplace policy.
Exceptions may arise in the case of collective bargaining agreements with unions.
Nicotine is an addictive drug, which when inhaled in cigarette smoke reaches the brain faster than drugs that enter the body intravenously.
Smokers not only become physically addicted to nicotine; they also link smoking with many social activities, making smoking a difficult habit to break.
In 2003, an estimated 45.
9 million adults were former smokers.
Of the current 44.
5 million smokers, more than 32 million persons reported they wanted to quit smoking completely.
Nicotine replacement products can help relieve withdrawal symptoms people experience when they quit smoking.
Nicotine patches, nicotine gum and nicotine lozenges are available over-the-counter, and a nicotine nasal spray and inhaler, as well as a non-nicotine pill, are currently available by prescription.
Nicotine replacement therapies are helpful in quitting when combined with a behavior change program such as the American Lung Association's Freedom From Smoking, which addresses psychological and behavioral addictions to smoking and strategies for coping with urges to smoke.