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Surgeon general: One puff is too much
Source: Agencies |
December 10, 2010, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THINK the occasional cigarette won't hurt? Even a bit of social smoking - or inhaling someone else's secondhand smoke - could be enough to block your arteries and trigger a heart attack, says the newest US surgeon general's report.
Lung cancer is what people usually fear from smoking, and yes, that can take years to strike. But yesterday's report said there's no doubt that tobacco smoke begins poisoning immediately - as more than 7,000 chemicals in each puff rapidly spread through the body to cause cellular damage in nearly every organ.
"That one puff on that cigarette could be the one that causes your heart attack," said Surgeon General Regina Benjamin.
Or the one that triggers someone else's: "I advise people to try to avoid being around smoking any way that you can," she said.
About 443,000 Americans die from tobacco-caused illnesses every year. While the smoking rate has dropped dramatically since 1964, when the first surgeon general's report declared tobacco deadly, progress has stalled in the past decade. About 46 million adults - one in five - still smoke, and tens of millions more are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke. The government had hoped to drop the smoking rate to 12 percent by this year, a goal now been put off to 2020.
Yesterday's report is the 30th issued by US surgeons general to warn the public about tobacco's risks.
"How many reports more does Congress need to have to say that cigarettes as a class of products ought to be banned?" asked well-known nicotine expert Dr K. Michael Cummings of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, who helped review the report. "One-third of the patients who are in our hospital are here today because of cigarettes."
Still, the report is unusual as it devotes more than 700 pages to detail the biology of how cigarette smoke accomplishes its dirty deeds - including the latest genetic findings to help explain why some people become more addicted than others, and why some develop tobacco-caused disease faster than others.
There is no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke, whether you deliberately inhale it or are a nonsmoker who breathes in other people's fumes, the report concludes.
Lung cancer is what people usually fear from smoking, and yes, that can take years to strike. But yesterday's report said there's no doubt that tobacco smoke begins poisoning immediately - as more than 7,000 chemicals in each puff rapidly spread through the body to cause cellular damage in nearly every organ.
"That one puff on that cigarette could be the one that causes your heart attack," said Surgeon General Regina Benjamin.
Or the one that triggers someone else's: "I advise people to try to avoid being around smoking any way that you can," she said.
About 443,000 Americans die from tobacco-caused illnesses every year. While the smoking rate has dropped dramatically since 1964, when the first surgeon general's report declared tobacco deadly, progress has stalled in the past decade. About 46 million adults - one in five - still smoke, and tens of millions more are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke. The government had hoped to drop the smoking rate to 12 percent by this year, a goal now been put off to 2020.
Yesterday's report is the 30th issued by US surgeons general to warn the public about tobacco's risks.
"How many reports more does Congress need to have to say that cigarettes as a class of products ought to be banned?" asked well-known nicotine expert Dr K. Michael Cummings of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, who helped review the report. "One-third of the patients who are in our hospital are here today because of cigarettes."
Still, the report is unusual as it devotes more than 700 pages to detail the biology of how cigarette smoke accomplishes its dirty deeds - including the latest genetic findings to help explain why some people become more addicted than others, and why some develop tobacco-caused disease faster than others.
There is no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke, whether you deliberately inhale it or are a nonsmoker who breathes in other people's fumes, the report concludes.
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