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The origins of tobacco use in this country
How it makes you feel
Health consequences
Tobacco and the law
Social consequences
Costs
Sex and smoking
Doing it safely (well, safer at least!)

Origins
Using tobacco has been around for quite a long time......

What kind of effects does it have?
Nicotine is a stimulant and smokers feel that tobacco helps relieve boredom and tiredness and also helps reduce stress and anxiety. In other words, it gives a slight "buzz".

The effects are almost immediate as the chemicals involved hit the brian in only a few seconds, but they fade equally quickly, making it more likely that someone will try for a repeated "hit". It's very usual to feel nausea and dizziness when they inhale tobacco smoke for the first few time - in short it makes them feel sick.

The Health effects...... what it does to you and others
Let's start with a couple of hard .

And what do these people die of, exactly? Well, smokers tend to be more likely to suffer from heart diseases
blood clots
cancer
strokes
bronchitis
bad circulation
ulcers
The more you smoke the bigger the risk, and there's a pretty clear "Dose-Response Curve".

There's more bad news about smoking from Mike, the talking head.
.....and the real kicker is that you don't even need to smoke. The doses you get for what's called "passive smoking" are lower, but the types of problems it can cause are pretty much the same.

Now, the problem with all this health information is that it's "stochastic" and everyone probably knows the kind of person who says "I've been smoking 40 fags a day every day for the past 60 years and I'm 82 and as fit as a fiddle!". And they're probably right - there are exceptions to every stochastic law. If you smoke, you might get away with it..........

If you're interested in working out how quickly smoking could kill you take a look at this information from a Canadian Life Insurance Company.

Tobacco and the law
Play the animated text to find out what the law is:

The social consequences of being a smoker
This is a tricky one. Advertisers would certainly have you believe that smoking's cool, sexy and so on. Remember how Rothman's used to advertise, with the ultra-macho cowboy? (You might want to "ask" about what happened to him though.)

Talk to your partner and/or friends about how you feel about smoking not being allowed in certain areas: smokers often feel that their rights are being taken away. On the other hand non-smokers often feel that smokers breathing out near them is taking away their rights. All that can be said for sure is that any addiction makes it harder to get on with your life - try not stopping for a fag-break when you're "addicted"

Smoking often results in limitations in very physical ways, too. A shortage of breath means you can't keep up when your mates go skating, for example.

......and just think about the money!

The Costs of using tobacco
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Work out the maths for yourself right here. It might not seem like a lot, but each time you smoke a cig, about 16p goes up in smoke. Add it up using the box on the right, to find out how much you spend each year....

More than you thought, or less? You might not like the suggestions about what else you can spend your money on, but even so, it's still worth thinking about, isn't it?

Of course, you could avoid this cost by being an OP smoker. (What's an "OP smoker"?) Of course, this would tend to make you a bit unpopular, unless you've got very forgiving friends!

Sex
Even if you think it looks cool, non-smokers won't be interested (snogging a smoker is like sucking an ash-tray for a non-smoker). So, without beating around the bush ..... non-smokers have more chance!

How to use tobacco as safely as possible
Doctors used to think there was a safe number of cigarettes to smoke as they thought that your body could repair itself fast enough to cope with the damage done by a small number of fags each day. Nowadays however, their advice is clear, simple and unequivical; don't smoke.

You've only got to look at the side of a packet to get the message from the Government's Chief Medical Offic

"Smoking kills"