Nicotine Inhaler Facts

The Nicotrol nicotine inhaler is a NRT that consists of a plastic cigarette-like tube that houses a replaceable nicotine cartridge and a mouthpiece. The cartridge contains 10mg of nicotine.

When one draws on the mouthpiece end of the nicotine inhaler over the course of about 20 minutes / 80 puffs, 4mg of nicotine is released and 2mg is absorbed through the membranes in the mouth and throat. Less than 5 percent of the inhaled nicotine reaches the respiratory tract. This can be repeated every 1-2 hours.

One Nicotrol cartridge delivers about the same amount of nicotine to the user as one cigarette.

Pros:

The nicotine inhaler reduces symptoms of nicotine withdrawal by allowing ex-smokers to quit using nicotine gradually.

Cons:

The nicotine inhaler reinforces smoking behavior.
When we quit smoking, it is counter-productive to use a NRT that mimics the cigarettes we are working so hard to break free of, both in looks and in how it is used.

Risk of re-addiction.
Because the nicotine inhaler is used on an as-needed basis, the potential to abuse this quit aid is significant. As mentioned above, it is critical to use this nicotine-based product exactly as prescribed, weaning off of it in the amount of time suggested.

The nicotine inhaler is a solid tool that can help you quit smoking, but remember that it is a quit aid, not a miracle worker. The magic for success with smoking cessation lies within you, not a product.

Work on developing the resolve to quit smoking one simple day at a time and be patient.

Time, determination and support will help you win this race. Believe that, believe in yourself and be willing to do the work it takes to quit for as long as it takes. You'll find that you can quit smoking, just as others have.

Sources:

National Institutes of Health. Nicotine Oral Inhalation. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a606021.html Accessed August 2010.

Smokefree.gov. Nicotine Inhaler Fact Sheet. http://www.smokefree.gov/mg-nicotine_inhaler.aspx Accessed August 2010.

Pfizer - Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Nicotrol® Inhaler. http://media.pfizer.com/files/products/uspi_nicotrol_inhaler.pdf Accessed August 2010.

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Teen Smoking Facts

Parents are the single biggest influence in their children’s lives. Use your voice and let your kids know that smoking is bad news. Your teens may seem to be tuning you out and accuse you of lecturing, but they are listening. Discuss the dangers of teen smoking with them early and often.

The smoking facts in this article have been compiled with teens in mind. Arm yourself with knowledge and information that will get your child’s attention.

The ingredients and additives in cigarettes when burned, create toxic, harmful chemical compounds. There are over 4000 chemicals in cigarette smoke, and more than 40 of them are known carcinogens.

Smokers inhale some pretty disgusting things with every puff: Tar Yes, the same thing they use to pave streets and driveways. Ever notice how smoker’s teeth are yellow? Tar is responsible for that.Hydrogen Cyanide This chemical is used to kill rats and it was used during WWII as a genocidal agent. Smokers inhale it with every puff.Benzene This chemical is used in manufacturing gasoline.Acetone It’s in nail polish remover and it’s in cigarettes.Formaldehyde This is what they use to preserve dead bodies. It’s also used as an industrial fungicide, is a disinfectant, and is used in glues and adhesives.Ammonia We use this chemical to clean our houses.And of course, there is Nicotine, the drug responsible for an addiction that smokers spend years and years trying to break.

Secondhand Smoke Facts
Cigarette smoke is full of harmful chemicals. Breathing in secondhand smoke is harmful for smokers and nonsmokers alike. Smokers suffer a double dose though, increasing the destructive effects of secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke kills about 3,000 nonsmokers each year from lung cancer. Secondhand smoke causes 30 times as many lung cancer deaths as all regulated pollutants combined. Secondhand smoke causes up to 300,000 lung infections (such as pneumonia and bronchitis) in infants and young children each year. Secondhand smoke causes wheezing, coughing, colds, earaches, and asthma attacks. Secondhand smoke can produce six times the pollution of a busy highway when in a crowded restaurant. Secondhand smoke fills the air with many of the same poisons found in the air around toxic waste dumps.Other facts about smoking: Every day in the United States alone, approximately 3,000 kids under the age of 18 start smoking. Every day 1,200 Americans die from smoking-related illnesses. Teen smokers get sick more often than teens who don’t smoke. Teen smokers have smaller lungs and weaker hearts than teens who don’t smoke. Teen smokers are more likely to use alcohol and other drugs. Addicted smokers tend to use more nicotine over time. The habit usually grows. What starts out as 5 or 10 cigarettes a day usually becomes a pack or two a day habit eventually. It is estimated that approximately 4.5 million adolescents in the United States are smokers. Spit tobacco, pipes and cigars are not safe alternatives to cigarettes. “Light” or “low-tar” cigarettes aren’t safe either. Those who start smoking young are more likely to have a long-term addiction to nicotine than people who start smoking later in life. Smoking-related illnesses claim more American lives than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide and illegal drugs combined.(1) People who smoke a pack a day die on average 7 years earlier than people who have never smoked. Smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States.(2)Be proactive! Give your children a solid anti-smoking foundation that will help them resist outside influences encouraging them to smoke as they go through their formative years. It’s up to us as parents to do all that we can to protect our kids from the dangers that tobacco use presents. Education about nicotine addiction is the best place to start.

1. American Cancer Society, Cigarette Smoking, 2002
2. U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services, Preventing Tobacco Use among Young People, A Report of the Surgeon General, 1994
Other facts and figures for this article obtained from: www.4women.gov and www.cdc.gov

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Cigar Smoking Facts

Young Americans are picking up cigar smoking in increasing numbers. This growing trend is due in part to big tobacco’s efforts to glamorize cigar smoking and has been reinforced by the movie industry. The portrayal of stars smoking in movies is influential, and often directly aimed at young people.

Many people are under the misconception that smoking a cigar is a safe alternative to cigarette smoking. It is not.

Let’s take a look at some of the facts about the dangers of cigar smoking:

Nicotine is the addictive ingredient in any tobacco product. Cigars have a high level of nicotine in them; usually many times that of cigarettes. In fact, some premium cigars have as much nicotine in them as an entire pack of cigarettes, or more. If cigar smoke is inhaled, nicotine will enter the bloodstream through the lungs. If not, the nicotine is absorbed through the lining of the mouth. Cigar smoke dissolves more easily in saliva than cigarette smoke because its composition is alkaline. This allows for quick absorption of nicotine, producing dependence without inhalation. Oral cancer, including cancers of the lip, tongue, mouth and throat Esophageal cancer Both cigarette and cigar smokers share a similar risk for cancers of the oral cavity and esophagus. People who smoke 1 or 2 cigars daily double their risk of oral and esophageal cancer over nonsmokers. Those who smoke 3 to 4 cigars a day increase their risk of oral cancers by 8 times and esophageal cancers by 4 times that of nonsmokers. Risk factors for people who are occasional cigar smokers (less than daily) are not known. Lung cancer – the risk is less than that of cigarette smokers, because most people do not inhale cigar smoke. It has been found however, that current and former cigarette smokers are more likely to inhale cigar smoke. Cancer of the pancreas Cancer of the bladder Cigar smoking is hard on the heart. A 25 year long study published in the Journal of American Medical Association reported that cigar smokers may suffer as much as 27 percent more risk than that of nonsmokers for coronary heart disease. The study looked at approximately 18,000 men, between the ages of 30 and 85. Over 1500 of them were cigar smokers, and it was discovered that these people suffered more occurrences of heart disease than did their nonsmoking counterparts. Cigar smokers are at an increased risk over nonsmokers for chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Most cigar smokers don’t inhale, so the risk of COPD is less than that of cigarette smokers. A U.S. study reports that cigar smokers have up to 45 percent greater risk of COPD than that of nonsmokers. There is evidence showing that cigar and pipe smoking may also lead to early tooth loss according to a study published in the January 1999 issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association. Researchers from Boston University followed 690 men over the course of 23 years and concluded that those who smoked cigars were 30 percent more likely to lose their teeth than nonsmokers. Pipe smokers were 60 percent more likely suffer early tooth loss than nonsmokers. Cigar and pipe smokers are also at an increased risk for alveolar bone loss.

Cigar smoking is dangerous. All forms of tobacco have risks associated with them, and cigars are no different. Don’t be fooled. There is no such thing as a risk-free tobacco product.

Sources:

Krall, Elizabeth et al. Alveloar Bone Loss and Tooth Loss in Male Cigar and Pipe Smokers Journal of the American Dental Association 1999 Jan;130(1):57. Iribarren, Carlos et al. Effect of cigar smoking on the risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cancer in men. New England Journal of Medicine 1999 Jun;340;1773-1780. Questions and Answers about Cigar Smoking National Cancer Institute Dangers of Cigar Smoking: Facts About the Dangers of Cigar Smoking. Action on Smoking and Health.

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Shocking Smoking Facts

As smokers, we learn early on to put up a mental wall of denial between our smoking habit and the harsh reality of the damage we're inflicting on ourselves with every cigarette smoked.

We tell ourselves lies that allow us smoke with some level of comfort. We say we have time to quit...that cancer doesn't run in our family...that we can quit any time we want to...that the bad things happen to other people. And because smoking is typically a slow killer, those lies support the framework of our wall of denial for years and years.

Eventually though, most smokers find that the wall begins to crumble, and bit by bit, smoking becomes a fearful, anxious activity. This is when most smokers start seriously thinking about how they might find a way to quit smoking for good.

A crucial step in the recovery process from nicotine addiction involves breaking through that wall of denial to put smoking in the proper light. We need to learn to see our cigarettes not as the friend or buddy we can't live without, but as the horrific killers they truly are.

If you're thinking that it's time to quit smoking, or have just quit and need some motivation to keep going, use the smoking facts below to fuel the fire in your belly that will help you beat your smoking habit, once and for all.

1) There are 1.1 billion smokers in the world today, and if current trends continue, that number is expected to increase to 1.6 billion by the year 2025.

2) China is home to 300 million smokers who consume approximately 1.7 trillion cigarettes a year, or 3 million cigarettes a minute.

3) Worldwide, approximately 10 million cigarettes are purchased a minute, 15 billion are sold each day, and upwards of 5 trillion are produced and used on an annual basis.

4) Five trillion cigarette filters weigh approximately 2 billion pounds.

5) It's estimated that trillions of filters, filled with toxic chemicals from tobacco smoke, make their way into our environment as discarded waste yearly.

6) While they may look like white cotton, cigarette filters are made of very thin fibers of a plastic called cellulose acetate. A cigarette filter can take between 18 months and 10 years to decompose.

7) A typical manufactured cigarette contains approximately 8 or 9 milligrams of nicotine, while the nicotine content of a cigar is 100 to 200 milligrams, with some as high as 400 milligrams.

8) There is enough nicotine in four or five cigarettes to kill an average adult if ingested whole. Most smokers take in only one or two milligrams of nicotine per cigarette however, with the remainder being burned off.

9) Ambergris, otherwise known as whale vomit is one of the hundreds of possible additives used in manufactured cigarettes.

10) Benzene is a known cause of acute myeloid leukemia, and cigarette smoke is a major source of benzene exposure. Among U.S. smokers, 90 percent of benzene exposures come from cigarettes.

11) Radioactive lead and polonium are both present in low levels in cigarette smoke.

12) Hydrogen cyanide, one of the toxic byproducts present in cigarette smoke, was used as a genocidal chemical agent during World War II.

13) Secondhand smoke contains more than 50 cancer-causing chemical compounds, 11 of which are known to be Group 1 carcinogens.

14) The smoke from a smoldering cigarette often contains higher concentrations of the toxins found in cigarette smoke than exhaled smoke does.

15) Kids are still picking up smoking at the alarming rate of 3,000 a day in the U.S., and 80,000 to 100,000 a day worldwide.

16) Worldwide, one in five teens age 13 to 15 smoke cigarettes.

17) Approximately one quarter of the youth alive in the Western Pacific Region (East Asia and the Pacific) today will die from tobacco use.

18) Half of all long-term smokers will die a tobacco-related death.

19) Every eight seconds, a human life is lost to tobacco use somewhere in the world. That translates to approximately 5 million deaths annually.

20) Tobacco use is expected to claim one billion lives this century unless serious anti-smoking efforts are made on a global level.

Tobacco offers us a life of slavery, a host of chronic, debilitating illnesses and ultimately death. And think about it: We pay big bucks for those "benefits." Sad, but true.

If you're a smoker wishing you could quit, make your mind up to dig your heels in and do the work necessary to get this monkey off your back now. You'll never regret it.

Sources:

WHO/WPRO - Smoking Statistics 28 May 2002. World Health Organization.

Cigarette Litter - How Many? Clean Virginia Waterways - Longwood University.

Cigarette Litter - Biodegradable? Clean Virginia Waterways - Longwood University.

The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General 2004. Dept. of Health and Human Resources - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nicotine - IDLH Documentation 16 August 1996. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Radioactive Cigarettes 02 April 1980. Tobacco Documents Online.

The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon Generals 04 Jan 2007. U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services.

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