When is World No Tobacco Day?
World No Tobacco Day is May 31st.
What is World No Tobacco Day?
Quitting is hard, but tobacco addiction is rough on your body. Some effects are immediately visible. Most aren’t. World No Tobacco Day spreads the word about the dangers of smoking and supports public policies that curb tobacco use.
So why exactly is smoking so bad? The damage list is pretty long. It basically poisons your body. It’s a slow process, but it’s happening. Tobacco thickens the blood and increases the chances of clotting, which could lead to a stroke. This makes your heart work harder and doubles your risk of a heart attack.
The toxins in tobacco also narrow your arteries. This limits how quickly your body can heal. It also lowers how much oxygen reaches your organs, such as your skin. (Yes, your skin is an organ.) Smoking wrinkles the skin and dulls the complexion.
Smoking also affects the lungs, bone strength, reproduction—so many parts of the body. If you were looking for a good reason to research tobacco statistics (like how many early deaths it causes every year), World No Tobacco Day is that good reason.
Fun facts about World No Tobacco Day!
- Stopping tobacco use quickly stops the deterioration of your skin.
- Within two years of quitting, your risk of a stroke is only half the risk of a smoker.
- After a year of not smoking, the risk of coronary heart disease decreases by half. Unfortunately, it takes 15 years to reach the risk levels of a lifelong non-smoker.
- The 600 ingredients in cigarettes create about 7,000 chemicals when burned. About 70 of those are known cancer-causing substances.
- Tobacco smoke includes arsenic, lead, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde, among other things.
How to celebrate World No Tobacco Day:
- Look into the health effects of smoking. Watch anti-tobacco commercials. Look up statistics of how many middle age deaths are directly attributed to tobacco use.
- If you’re trying to quit an addiction, get help. It’s not easy. Your friends and family will thank you though.
- Non-smokers, don’t vilify smokers. That just shames people. Also, it’s an addiction for many of them, and no addiction is easy to break.
What’s the hashtag for World No Tobacco Day?
Use #NoTobacco on social media to raise awareness about the dangers of tobacco.