What You Never Knew About Smoking!

1. Increases concentration.
2. People often go with the general sentiment on things like these, most of what you hear is hogwash. Cases of cancer are linked with smoking, but it's not proof. Only 1 in 3 of us will get lung cancer. (By "us" I also include non smokers).
3. Smokers are a persecuted lot, since this habit has been banned from workplaces, restaurants, buses, subways and planes. You don't think they'd outlaw breathing for Christ's sake.
4. Smokers have the only real community that's left in the workplace today.
5. Smokers suffer from less stress, since they actually take a few breaks per day.
6. That brouhaha about second hand smoking is a load of crap. It's just a phrase made up to get normal people who earlier didn't care about it, to go and further persecute the smokers.
7. It's cool to smoke. Ever seen a hacker or a real artist with a health shake?
8. Smokers support the economy by paying all those taxes, which *AHEM* some of us don't.
9. Warning:
10. The Surgeon General fails to warn you that non-smokers die every day
11. Studies have shown that prolonged contact (as in several years) with second hand smoking can cause mild lung problems. Second hand smoke has no immediate harmful effects.
12. Actually, why not just ban non-smokers? :D
13. Too much is made of the 4000 chemicals that make up a cigarette. Several carcinogens found in cigarettes are found in peppers, carrots, strawberries, tomatoes, onions and grapefruit.
14. Believe it or not, nicotine is actually "a surprisingly potent drug for a variety of diseases that afflict the brain, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Tourette’s syndrome." (An image makeover for nicotine: It shows promise against brain diseases, HealthCentral.com - Feb. 21, 2000) Smokers have a 60% lower risk of Parkinson's disease.
15. Nicotine has a positive effect on ulcerative colitis, which is an inflammation of the stomach lining, and this disorder affects nonsmokers more than smokers.
16. Smokers actually recovered better from a heart attack than nonsmokers.
17. Smoking was found to reduce the risk of estrogen-dependent endometrial cancer (dunno what that means, it just sounds really cool).
18. Schizophrenics (4 million Americans) who smoke can get enough nicotine stimulation to switch on a brain receptor that helps filter information.
19. Stanford researchers have discovered that low doses of nicotine - a major component of cigarette smoke - appear to promote new blood vessel growth (in mice). (“Nicotine to be used to treat heart disease,” Reuters Health, healthcentral.com - Sept. 2000)
20. Alcohol is even more harmful than smoking. Yet not much is said against it as compared to smoking. Half a bottle of wine can supply you with 32-40 times the amount of lead a whole pack of smokes can give you. "
21. Sick smokers may burden a country's health care system but dead smokers save governments money"

Source: mendhak.com

Don't worry, I don't condone the ill effects of smoking. I hate people smoking just as much you do!

I will leave you with a Bill Hicks quote:

"If you don't think drugs have done good things for us then take all of your records, tapes and C.D.s and burn them."