•
Every year, tobacco kills more Americans than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, murders, suicides, drugs, and fires. Combined.
•
Nearly 1/3 of all cancer deaths every year are linked to smoking.
•
The tobacco industry spends about $12.5 billion on advertising and promotions every year.
•
In 2006 alone, Americans spent an estimated $90 billion on tobacco products. That's over $34 million a day.
•
Cigarette companies advertised "light" cigarettes as less harmful for years, even though they have since been found to deliver he same levels of tar and nicotine as "normal" cigarettes.
•
In 2001, a tobacco company VP said that a company name change could direct attention away from them. In 2003, Phillip Morris (makers of Marlboro, among many other cigarette brands) changed its name to Altria. What a surprise.
•
A tobacco company once gave $125,000 worth of food to a charity (according to an estimate by the Wall Street Journal), then turned around and spent $22 million telling people about it.
•
Tobacco companies actually went to court to fight for the right to allow tobacco advertising near high schools. They won. Yay.
•
In the U.S., about 50,000 people each year die from secondhand smoke-related disease.
•
443,000 people die every year in the U.S. because of tobacco.
•
1,200 people die every day in the U.S. from tobacco-related disease.
•
Cigarette smokers are 20 times more likely to develop lung cancer.
•
Cigarette smoking is the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S.
•
Tobacco accounts for one out of every ten deaths worldwide.
•
In 1989, millions of cases of imported fruit were banned after a small amount of cyanide was found in just two grapes. There is 33 times more cyanide in one cigarette than what was found in those grapes.
•
Quitting at any age and at any time is beneficial. It's never too late to quit, and the sooner the better.
THE BASICS