Smoking

Once You Start, It's Hard to Stop

Smoking's a hard habit to break because tobacco contains nicotine, which is highly addictive. Like heroin or other addictive drugs, the body and mind quickly become so used to the nicotine in cigarettes that a person needs to have it just to feel normal.

Almost no smoker begins as an adult. Statistics show that about nine out of 10 tobacco users start before they're 18 years old. Some teens who smoke say they start because :

1) they think it helps them look older (it does - if yellow teeth and wrinkles are the look you want).

2) Others smoke because they think it helps them relax (it doesn't - the heart actually beats faster while a person's smoking).

3) Some light up as a way to feel rebellious or to set themselves apart (which works if you want your friends to hang out some place else while you're puffing away).

4) Some start because their friends smoke - or just because it gives them something to do.

5) Some people, especially girls, start smoking because they think it may help keep their weight down.(The illnesses that smoking can cause, like lung diseases or cancer, do cause weight loss - but that's not a very good way for people to fit into their clothes!)

6) Another reason people start smoking is because their family members do.

Most adults who started smoking in their teens never expected to become addicted. That's why people say it's just so much easier to not start smoking at all.

The cigarette ads from when your parents were young convinced many of them that the habit was glamorous, powerful, or exciting - even though it's essentially a turnoff: smelly, expensive, and unhealthy. Cigarette ads from the 1940s even showed doctors recommending cigarettes