Tobacco use is harmful to your health and to those around you.Smoking kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs, murders, and suicides combined, with thousands more dying from other tobacco-related causes including fires caused by smoking and smokeless tobacco use. Even if you don't smoke, breathing secondhand smoke is harmful to your health.

Here are some facts about smoking and the adverse health effects of tobacco use.

• Secondhand smoke is a mixture of gases and fine particles that includes smoke from a burning cigarette, cigar, or pipe tip and smoke that has been exhaled by a person smoking.
• Secondhand smoke has 250 toxic chemicals including more than 50 that cause cancer.
• There is no risk-free level of contact with secondhand smoke; even brief exposure can be harmful to health.
• In children, secondhand smoke causes ear infections, more frequent and severe asthma attacks, respiratory infections, and greater risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
• In adult nonsmokers, secondhand smoke can cause heart disease and lung cancer.
• Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke increase their heart disease risk by 25-30%.
• Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke increase their lung cancer risk by 20-30%.

• In 20 Minutes - Your blood pressure drops to the level it was before your last cigarette.
• In 2 weeks to 3 months - Your circulation improves and your lung function increases.
• In 1 to 9 months - Coughing and shortness of breath decrease.
• In 10 years - The lung cancer death rate is about half that of a person who is still smoking.
• In 15 years - The risk of coronary heart disease is that of a non-smoker's.

• Adult smoking rate: 22.2%
• Youth smoking rate: 26.8%
• Pregnant smoking rate: 12.1%
• Smoking caused health costs: $1.49 billion
• New youth smokers per year: 9,300