Smoking Facts

Some of these figures are startling, but they are absolutely true.

Smoking addiction is a worldwide epidemic, and it’s important that everyone knows the truth about tobacco.

10 million cigarettes are sold per minute worldwide

Sounds like an impossible number doesn’t it? Let’s go even further.

10 million x 60 minutes per hour = 600 million per hour. 600 million x 24 hours = 14,400,000,000 cigarettes sold PER DAY! Almost 14.5 billion!

Statistics say 20% of the world’s population smokes. There are 7 billion people in the world. 20% of 7 billion = 1.4 billion.

How many is that averaging per person? 14.4 billion / 1.4 billion ~ 10 per day. That means on average, every smoker in the world has a half a pack a day. I’d say that’s average.

Every 8 seconds, someone dies from a tobacco-related illness.

Let’s do the numbers again just to show you what’s really going on. Prepare to be shocked!

How many seconds are in a day?

60 seconds x 60 minutes = 3600 seconds in an hour. 3600 seconds x 24 hours = 86,400 seconds per day.

Since every 8 seconds someone dies from tobacco, we can divide the number of seconds per day by 8 to find out the number of deaths per day.

86,400 / 8 = 10,800 deaths per day from tobacco-related illnesses.

That’s per day! Per year would be 10,800 x 356 days = 3,844,800 deaths per year.

Every cigarette takes 5 minutes off your life.

This is a biggie for most people.

Again, even though it’s scary, let’s do the math to find out how much damage could potentially be done.

Let’s say you have a pack a day for 10 years. Each pack contains 20. If each one takes 5 minutes off your life, then each pack would take 100 minutes off your life, 20 x 5 minutes = 100 minutes.

For every day you smoke, you are losing 100 minutes off your life. 100 minutes per day x 365 days = 36,500 minutes off your life per year.

If you smoke for 10 years, that would be 36,500 minutes per year x 10 = 365,000 minutes off your life (potentially).

Remember that number.

How many minutes in a year?

60 minutes x 24 hours = 1440 minutes in a day. 1440 x 365 days per year = 525,600 minutes in a year.

For 10 years, you are potentially losing 365,000 minutes off your life. If 525,600 minutes are in a year, divide this number by 365,000 and you get around 3/4 of a year off your life.

For 20 years, you double that and you’ll lose almost 1.5 years. For 30 years, you’ll lose almost 2.25 years off your life. For 40 years, and you’ll lose almost 3 years off your life.

Can you believe it?

Smoking is a choice, and always will be. No one is forcing you. Even your addiction is not physically making you grab for a cigarette.

Nicotine may conjure up crazy mind games, and make you think it’s the only wise choice in life, but it isn’t actually forcing you to grab one.

That is your own choice.

Death caused by smoking is preventable, and the only person to make that happen is YOU.