I'm in my mid-20s, a heavy smoker and mild drinker. I have had problems getting and keeping an erection lately, and I've heard that smoking may cause this. Smoking can cause impotence, which is the inability to get or maintain an erection to the point of orgasm.
Nicotine cuts down on blood flow to the brain and the penis, both necessary for firm erections.
Smoking alters hormones and chemicals in the body in a way that can inhibit sexual functioning, especially sexual responsiveness, and contributes to degeneration of the arteries and nerves that lead to the penis. Numerous studies on the connections between smoking and impotence have been done, especially over the past 10 years. A study at Boston University in 1991 found 78 percent of their male patients who smoked suffered from impotence. The Boston University study also found that cigarette smoking was associated with arteriosclerosis in the artery that supplies the penis with the blood flow that creates and maintains the erection. Another study at Queens University in Kingston, Canada, found that heavy smokers were twice as likely to be impotent as nonsmokers.