Since that announcement, we have learned that smoking causes damage throughout the body; causing physical, emotional, and economic turmoil for our community. Our perceptions have changed, and we are aware that smoking causes cancer, heart disease, COPD, diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis and immune system weakness, increased risk for tuberculosis disease and death, ectopic pregnancy and impaired fertility, cleft lip and cleft palates in babies of women who smoke during early pregnancy, erectile dysfunction, and age-related macular degeneration.
Smokers die an average of one decade earlier than their counterparts. One in every three cancer deaths is caused by smoking.
Even those who do not smoke are affected. Not only do they grieve the loss of loved ones, second-hand smoke is known to cause strokes in non-smokers. Since 1964, 2.5 million deaths of nonsmokers were caused by exposure to second-hand smoke. This number includes 100,000 babies who have died from complications resulting from parental smoking.
And while smoking rates are less than half of what they were in 1964, 45 million Americans continue to light up; 3 million of them high school and middle school students. The economic costs is $300 billion in the United States alone.
And while today's smokers light up less cigarettes than in 1964, they are at a higher risk for disease. Changes in cigarettes have allowed smokers to inhale with more vigor, increasing the amount of carcinogens into their lungs. The amount of chemicals in cigarettes has changed as well, and over 70 of the assorted chemicals within cigarettes are known carcinogens.
While we have made tremendous strides in the past 50 years, smoking continues to be the premier cause of preventable disease and death in the United States.
Transcription Plus, LLC encourages all of our customers and business associates to take advantage of the smoking cessation programs available here. If you don't smoke, pass this information along to someone who does. You could be saving a life.
Mary A. Goehring
Owner/CEO
Transcription Plus, LLC
Corporate Office
40 Acorn Lane
Bristol, CT 06010
(860) 583-2818
Visit our web site: www.transcriptionplus.net