page_title: Cigarette
section_title: Smokers
hierarchical_section_title: Cigarette / Health effects / Smokers
caption_attribution_description: English: Artistas brand cigarettes from Mexico package from the first half of the 20th century http://elmodo.mx/
context_page_description: A cigarette is a narrow cylinder containing psychoactive material, typically tobacco, that is rolled into thin paper for smoking. Most cigarettes contain a "reconstituted tobacco" product known as "sheet", which consists of "recycled [tobacco] stems, stalks, scraps, collected dust, and floor sweepings", to which are added glue, chemicals and fillers; the product is then sprayed with nicotine that was extracted from the tobacco scraps, and shaped into curls. The cigarette is ignited at one end, causing it to smolder; the resulting smoke is orally inhaled via the opposite end. Most modern cigarettes are filtered, although this does not make them safer. Cigarette manufacturers have described cigarettes as a drug administration system for the delivery of nicotine in acceptable and attractive form. Cigarettes are addictive and cause cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, and other health problems.
  The term cigarette, as commonly used, refers to a tobacco cigarette but is sometimes used to refer to other substances, such as a cannabis cigarette.
context_section_description: The harm from smoking comes from the many toxic chemicals in the natural tobacco leaf and those formed in smoke from burning tobacco. People keep smoking because the nicotine, the primary psychoactive chemical in cigarettes, is highly addictive.  About half of smokers die from a smoking-related cause. Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body.  Smoking leads most commonly to diseases affecting the heart, liver, and lungs, being a major risk factor for heart attacks, strokes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (including emphysema and chronic bronchitis), and cancer (particularly lung cancer, cancers of the larynx and mouth, and pancreatic cancer). It also causes peripheral vascular disease and hypertension. Children born to women who smoke during pregnancy are at higher risk of congenital disorders, cancer, respiratory disease, and sudden death. On average, each cigarette smoked is estimated to shorten life by 11 minutes. Starting smoking earlier in life and smoking cigarettes higher in tar increases the risk of these diseases. The World Health Organization  estimates that tobacco kills 8 million people each year as of 2019 and 100 million deaths over the course of the 20th century. Cigarettes produce an aerosol containing over 4,000 chemical compounds, including nicotine, carbon monoxide, acrolein, and oxidant substances. Over 70 of these are carcinogens.
  The most important chemical compounds causing cancer are those that produce DNA damage since such damage appears to be the primary underlying cause of cancer.  Cunningham et al. combined the microgram weight of the compound in the smoke of one cigarette with the known genotoxic effect per microgram to identify the most carcinogenic compounds in cigarette smoke.  The seven most important carcinogens in tobacco smoke are shown in the table, along with DNA alterations they cause. 
  "Ulcerative colitis is a condition of nonsmokers in which nicotine is of therapeutic benefit." A recent review of the available scientific literature concluded that the apparent decrease in Alzheimer disease risk may be simply because smokers tend to die before reaching the age at which it normally occurs. "Differential mortality is always likely to be a problem where there is a need to investigate the effects of smoking in a disorder with very low incidence rates before age 75 years, which is the case of Alzheimer's disease", it stated, noting that smokers are only half as likely as nonsmokers to survive to the age of 80.
caption: Artistas brand cigarette package of Mexico from the Museo del Objeto del Objeto collection
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