10 Smoking Facts to Help You Develop a New Attitude Toward Your Cigarette Addiction

What are the smoking facts?  Smoking can kill you, and your cigarette addiction can also kill others.

If you want to quit cigarette smoking you need to start by changing your attitude and beliefs about your cigarette addiction.

All addicts engage in denial and rationalization.  You use these tidy bits of fiction to protect yourself from the stark reality of the smoking risks to your health and the health of those around you. Your tobacco addiction is likely accompanied some or all of the following bits of smoking fiction.  You cannot quit cigarette smoking unless you give up your denial and face the facts about smoking.

Fiction: I have the right to do what I want,  it is my body.

Fact #1: The facts about smoking reveal that your habit is contributing to air pollution, global warming, accidental poisoning, escalating  prevalence of asthma and even sudden infant death syndrome. Your addiction is harming not only you but those around you.  Your are not alone on this planet, and you are not alone in your life.  There are other people who love you and need you and your smoking is as harmful to them as it is to you.

Fiction: If I keep the windows open when I smoke in the car I am protecting the children from the harmful effects of smoke.

Fact #2: This does nothing to protect your children from the smoking risks to health. Every time you smoke a cigarette in the car they smoke it with you. 

Fiction: Smoking is a bad habit.

Fact #3: Smoking is a tobacco addiction not a habit.

Fiction: Everybody smokes.

Fact #4: Everybody does not smoke.  So many people in Canada are giving up smoking that the national rate for smoking is approaching 18% . If you smoke you are in the minority not the majority.

Fiction: Smoking is cool.

Fact #5: When you smoke you do not look cool, you look stupid.  Let's face it you have freely chosen to engage in an activity that drains your pocket book and harms your health. This decision calls your intelligence into question.  Smoking statistics in Canada show that smoking is more prevalent among the unemployed, lower income groups and populations with 12 years or less of grade school education.  Smoking doesn't make you look cool it makes you look uneducated, unemployed, and poor.

Fiction: It is only tobacco. Its not like its heroin or anything.

Fact #6 : Nicotine is more dangerous that cocaine, heroin or alcohol when it comes to dependence. Dependence develops quickly.  The product is legal and easily available making the dependence easier to maintain. Tobacco addiction causes more health problems worldwide than heroin.

Fiction: It is legal so it can't be that bad.

Fact #7: See smoking fact # 6

Fiction: I only smoke socially when I am with friends.

Fact #8: See smoking fact # 6. Your social smoking will likely result in a tobacco addiction.  If you value your friends do not harm them.  You have a moral obligation to protect them. 

Fiction: I am still young and will quit before I get older

Fact # 9: See smoking fact # 6. Smoking statistics show that most people start their cigarette addiction when they are teenagers.

Fiction: It is hopeless, I have tried many times and I cannot quit cigarette smoking.

Fact # 10: Not everyone is successful the first time they try to quit cigarette smoking.  The facts about smoking show that most former smokers had several unsuccessful attempts before they finally overcame their tobacco addiction.  Keep trying!

Of all the known smoking risks to your health perhaps the most significant one is not facing the facts about smoking and living in a world of denial.

If you want to quit cigarette smoking your reality check should include facing the smoking facts.  This one is so important it bears repeating.

Smoking can kill you.