Think Twice Before You Light Up That Cancer Stick

Many students continue to take up smoking cigarettes as a habit at an alarmingly high rate. This is one of the reasons why so many schools have started awareness campaigns about the ill effects of smoking during school assembly programs. Many of these students think that the nicotine will relax them and also help them to concentrate on their studies and assignments, especially when it is smoked along with coffee. It is a strange thing as most students are fairly intelligent enough to understand all the negative hazards of smoking to their health and yet more and more students are taking up smoking these days.

Because of these misunderstood notions about smoking and the alarming trend of young people taking up smoking, many schools and universities have started organizing stop smoking programs in which the speakers or lecturers talk about the facts of smoking and its ill effects on the body. They also educate the youth about effective ways to stop smoking if a person is already a regular smoker.

These notions about smoking that students or people in general have are not true at all. In fact, smoking does not help anyone to relax; nicotine may give a brief moment of feelings of calmness which is followed by a rush of adrenaline. We all know adrenaline does not relax anyone but gives a feeling of excitement. Also there are no scientific facts to back up the notion that smoking helps you to think. What it does is poison your body with around 4000 hazardous chemicals, many of which easily cross over to the blood brain barrier through the blood circulation system.

Some of the health hazards of smoking include lung cancer, coronary heart diseases and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Other cancers are also found in higher frequency among smokers than non-smokers.
If you are a regular smoker and have tried to quit smoking through your will power alone many times but have had relapses, then it is best to seek the help of a professional. You can also attend one of those seminars where they hold lecture programs on how to stop smoking. These seminars hire motivational speakers who are known to have talent for inspiring people to quit smoking and to lead a healthier lifestyle.

Many smokers are deluded, as in they think they can stop smoking anytime they want to, which is not true in the first place and they keep on procrastinating. If you have been smoking for 20 years and you quit, the benefits will be the same if you have been smoking only for a few years. Research has shown that quitting smoking is as difficult as quitting heroin or cocaine, so if you are planning to quit smoking, don’t take it lightly and seek professional help or use nicotine patches and gums. You have to be absolutely clear in your head that smoking adds nothing but poisonous chemicals in your body and you could also be affecting the health of your near and dear ones through passive smoke that they inhale.

Do not be shy to get your family involved in your quest to quit smoking and in fact it is good if they come along with you to one of the many stop smoking programs that you are attending. Nowadays, it has become much easier to stop smoking as specialists have come up with many new techniques to stop smoking like cognitive behavioral therapy, neuro-linguistic programming and hypnosis.

Addiction to Tobacco and Smoking

Let's look at someone trying to quit smoking. For most addicted smokers, the addition is about half-mental, half-physical. This varies with each individual. 

The physical portion of the addiction is to nicotine. The psychological part of the addiction is to the relaxing, familiar sensation of handling the cigarette, watching its curling smoke, the deep and relaxing breathing associated with inhaling and exhaling, the taste, and so on. 

When quitting, a smoker's conscious mind says, "I will stop smoking - no problem." But the unconscious mind has been conditioned that cigarettes give pleasure, and that's all it can focus on. 

The addicted, unconscious mind says, 'Give me a cigarette - now!' It only recognizes what feels good, or what doesn't feel good. It demands a cigarette without regard to right or wrong, and rebels against the conscious mind's decision to not smoke. 

During the process of quitting, however, a new habit of being a nonsmoker forms. The unconscious mind gradually gets used to not smoking, and the urges to smoke die away. See our cool quitting tips for more information on how to quit smoking.

Tobaccofree advocate provides various solutions like school assembly programs, quit smoking program, educational videos that helps people to quit tobacco and smoking.

Tobacco Wars! The Battle for a Smokefree Society

Tobacco is a truly important global issue: one out of three people worldwide are currently addicted. As a result, in coming decades smoking may kill one billion people in this century, according to the UN World Health Organization.

Tobacco Wars! The Battle for a Tobacco free Society educates and inspires college students, community members and health conference attendees. 

This speaker reaches the hearts and minds of his audiences. Patrick Reynolds opens with stories about the RJ Reynolds family, by turns colorful, humorous and moving. He speaks vividly and movingly about his memories his father's and eldest brother's deaths from smoking, and then switches gears and offers a report card on tobacco control for the State he is in. 

He'll compare your State to the rest of the nation in four areas: current State tobacco taxes, State spending this year on youth smoking prevention, spending on cessation, and your State's current laws limiting smoking in restaurants, bars and other workplaces. Finally, he'll suggest what can be done to bring about change. 

Mr. Reynolds will also offer his insightful perspective on the influence of the tobacco lobby on Congress, the UN World Health Organization's Global Treaty on Tobacco Control, ratified by 170 nations as of June, 2011, the new FDA law to regulate tobacco, and the cutting of highly successful tobacco prevention school assembly programs by most States. 

He'll provide the current number of States which have passed strong Statewide 100% smoking bans (as of 28 June, 2011). 

Time permitting, Patrick will include a powerful section from his talk for grades six through twelve: he'll recount the moving and powerful story of Sean Marsee, a young track star who died at 19 from chewing tobacco. He'll illustrate that story with shocking before and after Power Point slides and videos

For comic relief, he shows some hilarious slides which make fun of Joe Camel, depicting him in a hospital bed, and present "Malboro Country" as a group of smokers huddled in an alley behind an office building, getting their nicotine fix.