Understanding Tobacco and Finding Reliable Quit Smoking Resources

Patrick Reynolds, the grandson of the founder of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, now an anti-smoking advocate having founded The Foundation for a Smokefree America back in 1989, indicates on his site that an estimated 500 million people out of the world's 1.2 billion people who smoke will die. Furthermore, well over 400,000 people in the United States will lose their life to smoking each year. This is astonishing. Mr. Reynolds, himself, lost his father, oldest brother, and other relatives to emphysema, heart disease, and cancer.

Movies, old and new, continue to portray smoking as rebellious, hip, and cool. And the tobacco companies, despite only recently admitting that cigarettes cause cancer, continue to spend billions on advertising, targeting, specifically, the younger demographic. In fact, "the decision to smoke is not made by adults." A good majority of smokers begin by the age of 14 and most are addicted by the time they reach their 19th birthday. Which brings us to the firm conclusion that our focus should lie with the furtive marketing tactics tobacco companies use to pin would-be victims to smoke over the course of their lives. It is their chief objective, after all.

Some tobacco companies have, however, created outreach programs to help their customers quit smoking and even publish their harm reduction efforts on their business websites. Yet they continue to sell the very products that increase the risk of developing lung cancer, heart disease, and other serious health-related ailments and diseases.

Tobacco companies are working on reducing harm effects of smoking yet don't seem to get the point that renowned research universities and the concerned public alike are making, that cigarettes, even new tobacco products, should be eliminated altogether. Rather than developing harm reduction products, which have yet to gain praise from public health officials, attention should lie solely on helping people quit.

"All forms of tobacco are bad ... We shouldn't be out there promoting harm, even reduced harm." - Dr. Gregory Connolly, Director of Tobacco Control Research at Harvard School of Public Health (source: R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company)

Check out the following sites that can offer incredible references to additional information regarding the effects of tobacco, cancer, and ways to quit smoking. The consequences of not finding adequate help early can be extremely dramatic and painful to you and your loved ones.

- Smoking is Not Cool

- TobaccoFree.org

- DoSomething.org

- Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids