WEIRDLAND: Tobacco Smoke: glamorous or lethal?

"According to medical experts, passive smokers are people living among smokers and they are exposed to smoke concentration in the atmosphere they live in.

Before now, smoking was one habit fashionable and acceptable to the people but has been found after many years of study and linkages with many ailments to be as deadly as the scorpion sting.

Jake Gyllenhaal smoking in a scene from "Brothers" (2009)

Martin Sheen

According to medical experts, tobacco smoke in any form and at whatever level, precipitates ill-health. Smoking has been implicated in about 60 disease conditions including tooth loss, diabetes, impotence, stomach ulcers, ocular histoplasmosis (fungal eye infection), acute necrotising ulcerative gingivitis (gum disease), hearing loss, osteoporosis, duodenal ulcer, reduced sperm count, dysmenorrhoea (painful periods), early menopause, psoriasis, colon polyps, cataracts, asthma, reduced fertility, buerger’s disease, angina optic neuropathy (vision loss), premature wrinkling, crohn’s disease and asthma amongst others. Clinical records have shown that the odds are said to be more than double for those who smoke in excess of more than 20 cigarettes a day.

Charlie Sheen

Globally, tobacco causes about 5.4 million deaths yearly compared to three million, two million and one million deaths caused by AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria respectively. By 2020, WHO estimates that global death toll from smoking will hit 10 million.

Smoking is a universal problem, which though may have peculiar geographical approaches in terms of solutions, yet remains one with universal determination in tackling". Source: www.vanguardngr.com