What is smoking?

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Smoking is a chronic and addictive disease. It is considered a disease because it affects the health of the person who smokes. Chronic, because it develops over a long period of time which includes periods of relapse (although that does not mean that you cannot stop smoking). And addictive because, to stop the habit, you have to overcome a strong barrier: the addiction to nicotine.

This addiction extends to all manners of consuming nicotine: manufactured or rolled cigarettes, conventional pipes, new vaping devices, heated tobacco products or hookahs.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines a smoker as anyone who has smoked one cigarette a day during the last month.

As it is considered a disease, the help of health professionals trained in this topic is necessary, as well as pharmacological treatment, specifically designed to stop smoking. A relevant fact in this regard is that more than 40% of people aged 15 or over stopped smoking in 2020 in Spain, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

Smoking statistics

Here are some figures on smoking:

What does tobacco smoke contain?

Tobacco smoke contains almost 7,000 chemicals, many of which are carcinogenic. The main substances included in tobacco smoke are nicotine (which produces addiction), lead, arsenic, ammonia, benzene and carbon monoxide, among others.

This complex mixture of chemicals can affect the health of anyone smoking just a single cigarette, electronic cigarette or heated tobacco product a day. What is more, apart from illness, it can trigger a triple addiction from a psychological, physical and gestural point of view.