What will you gain by quitting smoking?

If you haven’t done the proposed reflection before, you can bring to mind now the intrinsic harms of tobacco: the loss of time, money, health, strength and physical fitness, and other more specific ones that make sense in your current situation.

A list of reasons why you’re quitting smoking also often helps, and they should be as personal as possible. If you’re short on examples, we’re adding a list written in the first person:

• I’m going to feel healthier; I’m going to regain my sense of smell, taste, energy, and lung capacity.
• I’m going to fight addiction and the drug tolerance process, which happens when I feel that I need more of the substance or need it more frequently.
• I’ll have whiter teeth and better breath. Tooth discoloration and stains will reverse. I won’t smell like tobacco. If I kiss, it won’t taste like an ashtray.
• My skin health will improve. I’ll avoid stains caused by tar consumption.
• I’ll reduce the risk of developing or worsening cancer, respiratory diseases, or cardiovascular diseases, since tobacco use is the world’s leading cause of preventable premature death, and each year 8 million people die because of smoking. Half of the people who smoke will die because of the effects of tobacco.
• I’ll stop consuming up to 43 carcinogenic substances: tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide, cyanide, nickel, arsenic, lead, and radioactive substances such as polonium 210, potassium 40, or radium 226.
• I’ll stop consuming poison. Nicotine is an insecticide. The tobacco plant developed that defense—an insecticidal poison—instead of growing thorns.
• My organic aging will decrease and my biological age (the age of my body) will again move closer to my chronological age (the number of years I’ve lived). It’s estimated that 1 cigarette shortens life by about 20 minutes. It’s proven that tobacco blocks skin oxygenation, which causes premature wrinkles.
• I’ll reduce the generational gap with younger people: conventional tobacco is being smoked less and less.
• My social image will improve.
• Smoking is a determinant of poverty: disadvantaged classes smoke more.
• My children, family members, and friends will be healthier. Quitting smoking is protecting boys and girls and all secondhand smokers. I’ll be a good example.
• Maybe the people around me will feel proud of me.
• I’ll feel proud of myself; I’ll feel that I have greater control over my life. Quitting smoking can increase my sense of agency, of control over other areas of my life where I want to make a change.
• I’ll be more resilient in the face of the difficulties, problems, and crises inherent to life, because when they appear, I’ll activate my personal and social resources instead of turning to a cigarette.
• Up to now, in the face of many different difficulties or problems, I used the same resource: tobacco. Now I’m going to diversify and expand my responses to crises, and that will help me get to know myself better.
• My life can change. I’ll feel freer.
• Smoking doesn’t make me free; it makes me dependent. Quitting smoking will set me free.
• Quitting smoking will mean taking control and choosing. Continuing to smoke would mean losing control.
• I’ll be able to exercise more: the blood that feeds my muscles will arrive sooner and with more oxygen.
• I’ll have more money.
• I won’t have to worry about the need to smoke when I can’t (meetings, trips, the movies, around people I don’t want to see me).

The health reasons for quitting smoking are usually well known. But do you know the social, economic, and environmental reasons to quit? Here are a few:

• I’ll stop contributing to climate change. Each year:

  • 600 million trees are cut down for tobacco products (≈ 1 tree per 300 cigarettes).

    Calculate: How many trees have to be cut down so you can smoke the cigarettes you smoke in a month?

  • 200,000 hectares are used and rendered infertile for its cultivation.

  • 22 billion tons of water are spent for its production.

  • 84 million tons of CO₂ are emitted, one-fifth of what the airline industry emits.

  • 4,500,000,000,000,000,000 (4.5 trillion, that is, 4.5 million billions) filters end up in the planet’s waters. Cigarette butts are the most littered item on Earth, and they contain 700 toxic products that leach into the environment. A cigarette butt takes between 8 and 12 years to decompose.

  • Climate change, deforestation, and global warming demonstrably worsen the health of all living beings. Tobacco not only directly affects the health of its consumers, but also has an indirect negative effect on the planet and on the health of all its inhabitants.

• I’ll stop contributing to a socioeconomic epidemic that impoverishes people and countries: public health spending due to smoking weighs down and worsens public health systems. The WHO estimates that smoking has a health cost of about €47 per person per year.
• I’ll stop contributing to what has been reported as child exploitation practices in tobacco-producing countries. A WHO report states that around one million children work on tobacco plantations. Between 10% and 14% of these children do not go to school. We’re linking an 8-minute video on the topic, in case you’re interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF77XsvucYk
• I’ll stop contributing to what has been reported as labor exploitation of the women farmers who grow tobacco. According to The Guardian, they earn about €244 a year. According to the WHO, 7 out of 10 people who work on tobacco plantations are women. The risks they’re exposed to have to do with the harshness of the work and exposure to nicotine and to toxic pesticides and fertilizers. Symptoms include dizziness, vomiting, and nausea, among others.

There can be many more reasons, and phrased in a more personal way and applied to your daily life.

The good news is that the body recovers very quickly and your biological age (that of your body) can recover and match your chronological age (the number of years since you were born). We’re sharing the short-term health benefits of quitting smoking:

Short-term benefits

• 20 minutes: blood pressure and pulse return to normal.
• 8 hours: oxygen levels return to normal.
• 24 hours: the risk of having a heart attack decreases and you stop smelling like tobacco.
• 48 hours – 5 days: smell and taste improve and nicotine is eliminated from the body.
• 72 hours: breathing improves and energy returns.

You’ll have the long-term benefits available in the next module!

Quitting smoking is the most effective thing a person who smokes can do to improve their health.

We believe that, for every achievement and progress made, you can feel grateful and proud of yourself. If progress brings you satisfaction or joy, we explain that the need associated with that emotion is sharing it—so we encourage you to do so!

Emotional framework:

Situation → Emotion → Need

In the following example, we reflect how the achievement of the first days or weeks without smoking may be experienced:

Achievement → Joy → Sharing the joy