🚬 What Are Cigarettes?

Cigarettes are sticks filled with tobacco. When people smoke them, they breathe in smoke that has nicotine and over 7,000 harmful chemicals. Many of those chemicals can hurt your body badly.

🧠 Why Do People Smoke?

• Nicotine makes people feel good for a short time.

• But it's very addictive, which means your body wants more and more.

• Quitting can be hard because of that addiction.

💔 How Cigarettes Hurt the Body

1. Lungs

• Smoke goes straight into your lungs.

• It causes:

  • Lung cancer (very deadly)

  • Breathing problems like asthma or coughing all the time

  • COPD (a lung disease that makes it hard to breathe forever)

2. Heart

• Smoking damages your heart and blood flow.

• It can cause:

  • Heart attacks

  • High blood pressure

  • Strokes (brain damage from blocked blood)

3. Mouth & Throat

• Smoking makes your teeth yellow and breath stink.

• It causes:

  • Gum disease

  • Mouth cancer

  • Voice box (throat) cancer

4. Other Cancers

Smoking can also cause cancer in the:

• Bladder

• Kidney

• Stomach

• Pancreas

• Cervix (in women)

5. Skin and Body

• Smoking makes your skin age faster (wrinkles).

• It weakens your bones and immune system.

• Makes you tired and sick more often.

😷 Secondhand Smoke = Still Dangerous

Even if you don’t smoke, breathing in someone else's smoke is called secondhand smoke. It can hurt people around the smoker, especially:

• Babies

• Children

• Pregnant women

• Pets

🛑 Quitting Helps A Lot!

Even if someone has smoked for years, quitting can still heal the body:

• In 20 minutes: heart rate goes back to normal.

• In 2 days: smell and taste get better.

• In 1 year: heart disease risk drops.

• In 5–10 years: cancer risk goes down.