Smoking Facts for Kids

It is very rightly said, that with every cigarette you smoke, you reduce one second of your life, and there are people who can smoke a pack or 25 cigarettes in one day! When an adult smokes a cigarette, his lungs has the capacity to metabolize the nicotine content ingested through one cigarette. But when the same cigarette is smoked by a thirteen year old, imagine the damage done to the still developing lungs. According to smoking facts and statistics, there are 10 million cigarettes sold every minute and every fifth buyer is a teen (aged 13 to 15).

Some kids get into smoking, just for the kick of it, while some are forced by friends, older influences and also situations. Irrespective of the reasons, the effects remain the same for all smokers and eventually leads to death. No matter how lightly we consider talking about stop smoking facts for kids, no reduction is observed in these statistics. Hence, just to let you know, there are a few smoking facts for kids mentioned in the coming up paragraphs, take a look!

Passive Smoking Facts for Kids
This is a huge matter of concern for parents and other elders who smoke with children around them. Passive smoking is defined as the inhalation of the smoke created by burning of tobacco products like cigarettes. When a person other than the smoker inhales this smoke, he is said to be engaged in passive or secondhand smoking, which could be voluntary or involuntary. Teens and younger children with parents who are chain smokers, are at a major risk of passive smoking. These secondhand smoking facts for kids are:

• According to the National Institutes of Health, passive smoking is responsible for almost 3,000 cases of terminal lung cancer in nonsmokers in American each year.
• It also causes about 300,000 cases of pneumonia and bronchitis among infants and toddlers every year, out of which majority have proved fatal.
• Also when a kid below the age of 13 is exposed to passive smoking there is an increased risk of wheezing, coughing, middle ear infection and asthma.
• There is a high risk of early onset of heart diseases due to secondhand smoking and kids who's parents smoke around them, are targeted on a larger scale.
• Allergies and the Crohn's disease are also the after effects of passive smoking on kids due to which they can develop learning difficulties, developmental delays, and neurobehavioral effects.

Teen Smoking Facts for Kids
After discussing the smoking facts for kids about passive smoking, let's talk about some smoking facts which are seen in teenage kids today. These facts can be used as anti smoking facts for kids as well, as after realizing the gravity of this slow killer, you can get kids to quit. Therefore read on to know more about these facts and you can also find some smoking effects.

• It is found out that everyday 3,000 children smoke their first cigarette and 20 percent of American teens are smokers.
• All around the world, there are at least 3 million young adolescents who have taken up smoking full-fledged.
• Kids, nowadays start smoking at the age of 14 years onwards and there are no signs of quitting as they are then habituated to smoking at least 4 cigarettes a day.
• Even after knowing that smoking is addictive and leads to disease, about 6 million teens in the US today smoke.
• Smoking can cause cancers like lung cancer, renal cell carcinoma, pancreatic cancer, brain tumor, and breast cancer in case of teenage girls.
• More than 4,000 toxic or carcinogenic chemicals have been found in tobacco smoke out of which benzene, carbon monoxide, arsenic, hydrogen cyanide and polonium 210 are the most common dangers of smoking.
• Research shows that around 50% of smokers who start smoking in adolescent years continue for 15 to 20 years.

With these smoking facts for kids, you can surely notice, that smoking is an expensive, unhealthy and fatal habit which is utterly useless. It is always better to quit when the effects are not bad, than landing up in a rehab, where things can be worse. So, if you are aware of kids smoking at an early age, try to convince them out of it, as there is nothing helpful in it.