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Many people consider smoking to be a very casual activity. But, the truth is that smoking tobacco has a huge impact on a person’s health. Even though cigarettes are readily available across the country, smokers need to ask themselves if their habit is an addiction. Does smoking cigarettes put you in the same category as those who suffer from a harmful and illegal habits that require drug addiction treatment to be stopped, like a heroin user?

One way that you can approach this subject is by looking at the effects of smoking. Are they as serious as those caused by more harsh sounding addictions? Smoking has negative effects on your breathing and can badly damage your lungs and airways. Over time, your lungs may become more sensitive and you may develop a cough that will not stop. Smoking could eventually lead to chronic bronchitis. You could also develop emphysema, which causes the small soft tissues in your lungs to die off. This makes it extremely hard to draw in each breath.

It is also important to examine the statistics when it comes to smoking cigarettes. Statistics show that as many as 400,000 people in the United States alone die early deaths because of the effects of smoking. The life expectancy of a smoker is several years shorter than that of a non-smoker. Studies have shown that smokers are at a much higher risk for cancer, specifically lung cancer. However, other types of cancer have been linked to smoking cigarettes, these include stomach, larynx, pancreas, liver and kidney cancer. All of which can start in one area and move into the lymph nodes and scatter throughout the body, eventually leading to brain cancer.

Elderly smokers are almost twice as likely to experience respiratory problems than their non-smoking peers. Some problems are mild, such as developing a cold much more easily. However, many of these respiratory problems are quite severe – such as COPD. COPD stands for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. This condition can cause emphysema, which results in difficult breathing.

Many drug addicts are also cigarette smokers and when one enters into a drug rehab program, they are often told that the best time to stop smoking is right then. That’s not only due to the dangers of cigarette smoking, but also because it’s easier to go “cold-turkey” on multiple addictions at the same time, instead of tackling them individually as one could become a gateway back into the other addiction.