A new report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finds that the majority of smokers want to quit smoking. The study was reported in an article on Medicine Net Daily:

“Despite the known dangers of smoking, about 20% of Americans still light up, but almost 70% want to quit, a new government report shows.

‘This study is reassuring to us,’ Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a noon press conference Thursday…

…McAfee noted that most smokers who manage to quit do so without the help of drugs or counseling…

…Smoking is still the leading preventable cause of death and disease, including cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other lung diseases. Each year in the United States, smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke kill some 443,000 people, the report noted.

In addition, for every smoking-related death there are 20 people living with a smoking-related disease, the agency said.”

Read the full article here: Smokers Want to Quit

It is reassuring that most smokers want to quit smoking; it is also appalling that a substance that kills so many people every year is still legally available in this country. The argument for banning tobacco products would not be so strong if the only people suffering from the effects of tobacco smoke were those who chose to smoke tobacco. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Non-smokers, including children, who breathe secondhand smoke are also affected, and even die as a result of someone else’s choice to smoke tobacco.

Here are some facts from the CDC about secondhand smoke:

• Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can be harmful to health.
• Secondhand smoke contains toxic and cancer-causing chemicals.
• Secondhand smoke causes heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults.
• Secondhand smoke causes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and a number of health conditions in children, including middle ear infections, more severe asthma, and respiratory infections.
• About 4 in 10 nonsmokers in the US (40%, or 88 million people) continue to be exposed to secondhand smoke.
• Almost everyone who lives with somebody who smokes indoors is exposed to secondhand smoke. Children and teens are more likely than adults to live in homes where someone smokes indoors.
• About 54% of children (aged 3–11 years) are exposed to secondhand smoke. Children are most heavily exposed at home.
• About 47% of youth (aged 12–19 years) are exposed to secondhand smoke.
• About 56% of black nonsmokers are exposed to secondhand smoke compared with about 40% of white nonsmokers and 29% of Mexican-American nonsmokers.

You can find more information about the dangers of secondhand smoke on the website of the CDC, http://www.cdc.gov.

An estimated 88 million non-smokers have their health put at risk by exposure to tobacco smoke. That is an appalling number, and the fact that we tolerate it as a people with no public outcry speaks volumes about our civilization.