Tar coats your lungs like soot in a chimney and causes cancer. A person who smokes 20 cigarettes a day breathes in up to 150ml of tar in a year. Over time, your airways narrow and let less air into your lungs. The strain put on your body by smoking often causes years of suffering. People with emphysema often get bronchitis again and again, and suffer lung and heart failure.
Lung cancer is caused by the tar in tobacco smoke.
Men and women who smoke are ten times more likely to die from lung cancer than non-smokers. Heart disease and strokes are also more common among smokers than non-smokers. Smoking causes fatty deposits which narrow and block blood vessels leading to heart attack and stroke. Smoking causes around one in five deaths from heart disease. In younger people, three out of four deaths from heart disease are due to smoking.