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Tobacco smoking leads most commonly to diseases affecting the heart and lungs, with smoking being the major risk factor for heart attacks, strokes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, and cancer (particularly lung cancer, cancers of the larynx and mouth, and pancreatic cancer).

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that tobacco smoking caused 5.4 million deaths in 2004 and 100 million deaths over the course of the 20th century. Similarly, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes tobacco use as “the single most important preventable risk factor to human health in developed countries and an important cause of premature death worldwide.”

Smoke contains several carcinogenic pyrolytic products that bind to DNA and cause many genetic mutations. There are over nineteen known chemical carcinogens in cigarette smoke. Tobacco contains nicotine, which is a highly addictive psychoactive chemical. When tobacco is smoked, nicotine causes physical and psychological dependency.

Tobacco use is also a significant factor in miscarriages among pregnant smokers; it contributes to a number of other threats to the health of the fetus such as premature births and low birth weight and increases the chance for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome by up to 3 times. The result of scientific studies done in neonatal rats indicates that exposure to cigarette smoke in the womb may reduce the fetal brain’s ability to recognize hypoxic conditions, thereby increasing the chance of accidental asphyxiation. Incidence of impotence is approximately 85 percent higher in male smokers compared to non-smokers, and it is a known cause of erectile dysfunction (ED).