12 Weird Facts About Smoking

The facts about smoking you really need to know:

Do you have any idea what kind of damage smoking can cause to your body? It’s not just damage to your mouth, throat, and lungs, but it can lead to all sorts of problems with your heart, your circulation, your digestion, your weight, and more. The damage doesn’t just stem from cigarettes– pipes, cigars, and all sorts of other smokables are to blame as well.

Here are some more fascinating and weird facts about smoking:

1. More than 1 trillion cigarettes are sold between countries every year, making it the single most traded item in the world. The nicotine industry currently hovers around $400 billion per year, and is one of the largest industries today.
2. American cigarette manufacturers make more money exporting their products around the world than they do selling within the US. Roughly 70% of the cigarette market in the world is dominated by Camel, Kool, Kent, and Marlboro.
3. Cigarettes contain a lot more than just nicotine! They also contain chemicals like lead, formaldehyde, arsenic, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, and ammonia, along with 43 other chemicals that have all been linked to cancer.
4. Did you know that the nicotine content of your cigarettes has been increasing in the last 30 years? Compared to the amount of nicotine present in cigarettes in the 1970s, the average smoker after the year 2000 consumes over 10% more nicotine per cigarette!
5. What do cigarettes and your pee have in common? Urea, a chemical compound that is one of the major components in your urine, is used to give cigarettes a “flavor”. Can you say “Ew!”
6. While the legal age for purchasing cigarettes used to be 16, most of the world has now changed the legal age to 18. In Japan, you must be at least 20 years old in order to purchase cigarettes.

READ MORE: Is Smoking Still Sexy?

7. Oddly enough, minors are allowed to smoke at any age. There are no legislations that prohibit minors from smoking. Parents can legally permit their minors to smoke, and minors are legally allowed to indulge. However, it’s the SALE to minors that is absolutely illegal.
8. The average cigarette will contain up 4,000 ingredients, most of which are chemicals and dangerous compounds. When burned, these ingredients can produce more than 200 chemical compounds, most of which will cause lung and other damage to your body!
9. In Europe, only 26% of women smoke, compared to 46% of men. In the United States, 22% of women smoke, compared to 35% of men. In Africa, 4% of women smoke, compared to 29% of men. In the Western Pacific, 8% of women smoke, compared to 60% of men. In Southeast Asia, 4% of women smoke, compared to 44% of men.
10. Diabetics may be doing their body TWICE as much harm by smoking! Not only will the cigarettes increase their risk of lung cancer, but each cigarette contains up to 20% sugar. This sugar can cause serious health problems for those with diabetes!
11. Nicotine is an incredibly fast-acting chemical! It will reach your brain within about 10 seconds after inhaling. It is absorbed into every part of the body, and has been found in breast milk.
12. People who smoke may be able to recover more quickly from infections, or they may not suffer infections in the first place. Smokers tend to have more active immune systems, thanks to the fact that they bombard their body with “invaders” on a regular basis. Their antioxidant activity, however, will be much lower. The immune system will have to work harder to protect their body.