Questions About Smoking

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 percent of adults older than 18 smoke despite government health warnings and awareness of the dangers. According to the National Cancer Institute, there are myths and misunderstandings about how bad smoking tobacco is for your health, whether lighter cigarettes are better for you and how addictive smoking really is.

Are Lighter Cigarettes Safer?

• It might be tempting to smoke light cigarettes, low-tar cigarettes or menthol cigarettes, believing they might be better for your health than full-strength ones, but the federal government's National Cancer Institute concluded that light cigarettes provide no benefit to a smoker's health. If you smoke light cigarettes, you might inhale deeper, smoke more cigarettes to compensate or smoke down to the end of the cigarette to get more nicotine.

Are Herbal Cigarettes Safe?

• Herbal cigarettes are made from vegetables matter, herbs and leaves instead of tobacco. But even though herbal cigarettes do not contain tobacco, they emit tar and other dangerous chemicals, just like tobacco. A team from the University of Vienna found that herbal cigarettes produce a level of carbon monoxide similar to normal tobacco. Although they aren't more dangerous than normal cigarettes, they provide few benefits.

How Addictive is Smoking?

• When you smoke, you inhale nicotine --- among other chemicals --- which floods the brain with a neurotransmitter called dopamine. This gives you an adrenaline-like rush, which wears off quickly. A smoker becomes dependent on the rush of dopamine from smoking, and over time he needs to smoke more to get the same rush. He also begins to suffer withdrawal symptoms when he does not smoke, says the NHS Choices website. Addiction is thought to be caused by the inhalation of the nicotine over time, and almost everyone who takes up smoking eventually will become addicted.

Does Smoking Really Cause Cancer?

• Tobacco smoke contains many carcinogenic chemicals. Tobacco usage causes one in three cancer deaths in the United States, and it is the single biggest cause of cancer in the world, Cancer Research UK says. Lung cancer, which has low survival rates, is caused by smoking in nine out of 10 cases. Smoking has also been linked to cancer of the mouth, sinuses, liver, pancreas, ovaries, bladder, cervix and even leukemia. Half of all smokers will die from smoking-related illnesses.

Will Giving Up Really Help?

• The benefits of quitting smoking are fast and noticeable. Within 72 hours of giving up, your breathing will become easier, and within as little as three months your lung function will increase by 10 percent. After a year, your chances of heart attack is about half of that of a smoker, and this falls to the same level of a non-smoker after 15 years. Within 10 years, your lung cancer risk is about half that of a smoker, says Patient UK, even if you have smoked for years.