The tobacco companies are spending a lot of time and money to pull you in. They think they’re smarter than you are. But guess what? Knowing is smarter. Leaders lead. And leading starts with you.
Here’s what you can know to be the voice that others listen to…
- Big Tobacco spends a lot of time and money to pull you in—more than $12 BILLION every year.
- Studies show that kids are twice as sensitive to tobacco advertising as adults—a more powerful influence than peer pressure. One-third of kids’ experimentation with smoking comes from tobacco company advertising. How dumb do they think you are?
- Even at the “bargain” price of $5 a pack, smokers your age spend $38 million on cigarettes a year. That translates to more than $104K spent on tobacco a day. In Arkansas alone. What could you do with money like that?
- Colorful, cool designs are part of the trick. Big Tobacco makes packaging look as harmless as candy or gum to make it seem more fun.
- Tobacco companies can't pay to place their products in movies or television programs anymore, but smoking on screen still exists, making the habit look untruthfully glamorous and influencing youth to smoke. At least two-thirds of movies youth see still contain tobacco use.
- Smoking kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs, murders, and suicides combined. And that doesn’t even count exposure to secondhand smoke, smoking-caused fires, smokeless tobacco use, or cigar and pipe smoking.
- Arkansas kids under 18 who’ll ultimately die prematurely from smoking? 64,000. Secondhand smoke causes 30 times more lung cancer deaths nationally than all the different kinds of pollution combined. What are the odds that somebody you know will be among the victims?
- Smokeless tobacco products are every bit as damaging and addicting as cigarettes. And they can contain about 30 cancer-causing substances.
- ALL cigarettes contain stuff like this:
- Tar, which gives cigarettes flavor, that’s the same stuff used to pave roads and driveways.
- Formaldehyde. It’s what’s used to preserve dead animals.
- Cyanide, a main ingredient in rat poison.
- Lead. You’ve heard about its dangers in paint—what do you think happens if you inhale it?
- Acetone. The same stuff that’s in nail polish remover.
- Ammonia. You know what that is…why would you want to smoke it?
- Carbon monoxide. The pollutant that comes out of car tailpipes.
- Hydrazine, that’s a chemical in rocket fuel.
- Smoking fills the air with a lot of the same poisons found around toxic waste dumps. In a crowded restaurant, it can produce six times the pollution of a busy highway. It can cause leukemia in cats and enlarged hearts in dogs.
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