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Tobacco trivia

  • Every ten seconds, somewhere in the world, someone dies of tobacco-related causes. Tobacco kills more Americans each year than alcohol, cocaine, crack, heroin, homicide, suicide, car accidents, fire and AIDS combined.
  • Tobacco products are the only legal consumer products that are LETHAL when used exactly as the manufacturer intends.
  • Cigarettes are the leading cause of fire deaths in the USA.
  • Each year, the American Association of Poison Control Centers receives reports of poisoning in young children who eat tobacco products.
  • Smokers pay twice as much for life insurance and will die an average of 13 - 14 years earlier than non-smokers.
  • It costs tobacco companies approximately 5 cents to produce a pack of cigarettes.
  • A study found that dogs in smoking households had a 60 percent greater risk of lung cancer; a different study showed that long-nosed dogs, such as collies or greyhounds, were twice as likely to develop nasal cancer if they lived with smokers.
  • And yet another study found that cats whose owners smoked were three times more likely to develop lymphoma, the most common feline cancer.
  • There are 69 known carcinogens in cigarettes.
  • Tobacco smoke contains at least 7,000 chemicals including: ammonia, cyanide, arsenic, and formaldehyde.
  • Cigarette butts take about 25 years to decompose.
  • Cigarette butts are the major source of litter in the USA.
  • Tobacco company executives don't generally use their own products. They leave that for "the young, the poor and the stupid," as R.J. Reynolds executives once told one of their Winston models.