Stop cancer before it starts.
According to the National Cancer Institutes 2001 Cancer Progress Report, two kinds of factors can affect a person's risk of getting cancer: behaviors and exposures to chemicals in the environment. Choosing the right behaviors and preventing exposures to certain chemicals may help to prevent cancers before they can start.
Smoking causes about 30 percent of all U.S. deaths from cancer. Avoiding tobacco use is the single most important step Americans can take to reduce the cancer burden in this country.
Cigarette smoking also causes cancers of the larynx, mouth, esophagus, pharynx, and bladder. In addition, it plays a role in cancers of the pancreas, kidney, and cervix.
Cigar smoking has been found to cause cancers of the larynx, oral cavity (lip, tongue, mouth, and throat), esophagus, and lung.
Although the rate of smoking has dropped by nearly half since the Surgeon General’s first report on smoking in 1964 (42 percent of adults were current smokers in 1965), progress has slowed in recent years. Further decreases in tobacco use could vastly improve the public’s health.
From 1993 to 1997, U.S. cigar sales soared by almost 50 percent, mostly due to increased sales of large cigars. This followed new cigar marketing approaches that began in 1992.
Other forms of tobacco used by young people include smokeless tobacco (chewing tobacco and snuff, also known as spit tobacco), cigars, and bidis (small, brown, hand-rolled, flavored cigarettes). Each of these also can cause cancer.
Since 1997, current smoking leveled off or possibly began to decline among 9th–11th graders. However, it has risen steadily among 12th graders since 1991.
In 1999, 13 percent of middle school students (grades 6 to 8) reported using some form of tobacco in the past month. Cigarettes were the most popular, followed by cigars.
Bidis—increasingly popular among young people—can be even more dangerous than cigarettes. Bidis produce higher levels of carbon monoxide, nicotine, and tar than cigarettes. Also, bidi smokers tend to inhale more often and more deeply than cigarette smokers.
Age of Smoking Initiation:
Most smokers try their first cigarette before the age of 18 and become addicted during adolescence.
Second Hand Smoke:
In 1993, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that secondhand smoke is a "known human carcinogen." The EPA also reported that secondhand smoke causes some 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year among U.S. nonsmokers.
Although secondhand smoke remains a major public health concern, nonsmokers' exposure to tobacco smoke declined more than 75 percent from 1988-1991 to 1999.
In 1999, nearly 7 out of 10 U.S. workers reported a smoke-free policy in their workplace.
State laws that protect against secondhand smoke slowly became more common in the past decade. It appears that greater improvement came from voluntary or local efforts during that time.
Also, the sooner one quits smoking, the better. Long-term smokers who stop smoking at around 50 or 60 years of age are less likely to get lung cancer than are people who continue to smoke. Quitting at around age 30 lowers this risk even more.
The quickest non-cancer health benefit of quitting is a lower risk of coronary heart disease. This risk is cut in half after 1 year of quitting. After 15 years, the chance of getting the disease is similar to that of people who never smoked.
Studies show that most smokers want to quit.
Efforts to reduce smoking are most effective when multiple techniques are used, including educational, clinical, regulatory, and economic interventions (for example, increasing excise taxes), along with media campaigns and other social strategies.
Efforts to help young people delay or avoid smoking may help to prevent some cancers.
Additional important steps are maintaining a healthy weight, being physically active, eating a low-fat diet and enough fruits and vegetables, avoiding too much alcohol, and protecting skin from sunlight.
Two drinks daily increase the risk of getting breast cancer by about 25 percent. The chances of getting liver