Statistics to Help You Stop Smoking

Sometimes it can be hard to find the right motivation when you are trying to quit smoking.

One thing you could use is some smoking statistics. Wikipedia defines statistics as “a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data”. Statistics will help give you a good idea about anything you wanted to know about smoking; how many people smoke worldwide, how many deaths smoking causes, what is the average someone spends on cigarettes in a year etc.

Here are some examples of global statistics that might help motivate you to quit.

• A cigarette contains over 4000 toxic or carcinogenetic chemicals
• Smoking related-diseases are responsible for one in ten adult deaths.
• Somebody dies from tobacco use every 8 seconds
• Approximately 10 million cigarettes are sold a minute, that’s 15 billion a day
• One in every 5 teenagers aged 13-15 smokes
• 80,000-100,000 children start smoking everyday
• 50% of those who start to smoke when an adolescent will go on to smoke for 15-20 years.
• Smoking is the single largest cause of premature or preventable death
• The United States spends approximately $150 billion annually on smoking related diseases
• 80% of American advertising executives from some of the top agencies believe that advertising makes smoking more appealing or socially acceptable to children.
• In 1997, tobacco companies in the United States spent $15 million a day in advertising. That equates to 5.7 billion in that year.

So how can you use a statistic as a motivation to quit smoking?

Whenever you find a statistic that catches your eye, applies to you and makes you really think about your smoking habit, then make a note of it, print it out or rip it out of the book or magazine. Keep that statistic with you at all times and whenever you feel the need for a cigarette then take the statistic out and read it. It may be all the motivation you need not to light up.

Keep reading it over and over again if need be. Feel free to print off the above statistics if you wish.

You are not restricted to one statistic of course; you may end up carrying a collection of them around with you in your pocket, wallet or purse. It is best to only collect statistics that really interest you and catch your eye, the ones that make you think about your smoking habit may be the ones that help motivate you to quit.