Stopping for a day may start the ball rolling toward stopping for good. That would be one of the greatest gifts you could give to yourself and your family. That's important, because 90 percent of adult smokers are addicted to tobacco before age 14, according to the American Cancer Society. Most smokers begin before they're 18, and about 3,000 teens start smoking every day. Though it's illegal to sell tobacco to minors, kids under age 18 spend over a billion dollars yearly on cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.
Smoking is a lightning rod for cancer and heart disease.
Recently, it's been associated with causing erectile dysfunction in men and it also may diminish sexual function in women. New information about the dangers of secondhand smoke continues to waft up. It's estimated that more than 40,000 nonsmokers die yearly from lung cancer or heart disease caused by secondhand smoke. One study found that nonsmoking wives of smokers had a 30 percent greater chance of developing lung cancer than women who lived in tobacco-free households. The longer a woman lived with a smoker, the greater her risk.