For a multitude of good reasons, smokers are always being encouraged to take the first steps to quit smoking. National No Smoking Day in the UK was recently celebrated on the second Wednesday of March. Every November in the US is Tobacco Cessation Month and November 15th is the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout, where smokers across the US are challenged to take the first step towards quitting. In the Philippines, June has been National No Smoking Month by presidential Proclamation since 1983. Every year, on 31 May, the World Health Organization (WHO) and global partners join together to celebrate World No Tobacco Day. Recently, in December 2022, New Zealand became the first country in the world to outlaw smoking for the next generation by implementing an annually rising smoking age. 

If you haven't figured it out by now, smoking is bad for you, and foisting your second hand smoke and third hand smoke on others is bad for them (thirdhand smoke is the tobacco residue that’s left behind after smoking and builds up on surfaces such as hair, clothing, car interiors, and household furnishings, which toxic residue re-circulates back into the air creating harmful compounds that remain at high levels long after smoking has stopped). 

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last generation, you know that smoking (including secondhand and thirdhand smoke) causes cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Smoking also increases the risk for tuberculosis, certain eye diseases, and problems of the immune system, including rheumatoid arthritis. If these reasons aren’t enough, new research now indicates that smoking increases the risk of dementia. "We know that smoking harms every organ of the human body," said Adrienne Johnson, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention in Madison. "The brain is no exception."