Essential Information

Essential Information 01: Smoking Statistics: Who Smokes and How Much (Purchase £1.00)

Essential Information 02: Smoking Statistics: Illness and Death (Purchase £1.00)

Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, causing many diseases. Smokers face a higher risk than non-smokers for a wide variety of illnesses, many of which may be fatal, however many also cause years of debilitating illness.

Essential Information 03: Young People and Smoking (Purchase £1.00)

Essential Information 04: Smoking and Cancer (Purchase £1.00)

Essential Information 05: Smoking and Respiratory Disease (Purchase £1.00)

Essential Information 06: Smoking, The Heart and Circulation (Purchase £1.00)

Essential Information 07: Smoking and Reproduction (Purchase £1.00)

Essential Information 08: Secondhand Smoke (Purchase £1.00)

Tobacco smoke contains over 4000 chemicals in the form of particles and gases. Breathing other people's smoke is called passive, involuntary or secondhand smoking. Some of the immediate effects of secondhand smoke exposure include eye irritation, headache, cough, sore throat, dizziness and nausea.  

Essential Information 09: Nicotine and Addiction (Purchase £1.00)

A comprehensive look at why and how nicotine is so addictive. This factsheet examines the mental and physical aspects of nicotine addiction and rebuts the tobacco industry assertion that nicotine is not addictive.

Essential Information 10: How Smoking Affects the Way You Look (Purchase £1.00)

Essential Information 11: Stopping smoking: the benefits and aids to quitting (Purchase £1.00)

Believe it or not - the benefits to health start from within 20 minutes of you putting out your last cigarette. But also, like with any other drug, there are withdrawal symptoms. Don't go into an attempt unguarded - know what to expect.

Essential Information 12: What's in a cigarette? (Purchase £1.00)

Cigarettes look deceptively simple, consisting of paper tubes containing chopped up tobacco leaf, usually with a filter at the mouth end. In fact, they are highly engineered products, designed to deliver a steady dose of nicotine to the smoker.

Essential Information 13: Pipe and Cigar Smoking (Purchase £1.00)

In 1974, 34% of men smoked cigars. In 2002 of the 30% of British men who were current smokers, 5% smoked cigars and 1% pipes.  Pipe and cigar smoking carries a major risk of smoking-related ill health whether from primary or secondhand smoking.

Essential Information 14: Smoking in workplaces and public places (Purchase £1.00)

Explores why smoking in workplaces and public places is such an issue.

Essential Information 15: Smoking and Mental Health (Purchase £1.00)

Nobody is going to tell you that quitting smoking is going to be easy - but we will tell you the best ways to go about trying to make a successful quit attempt.

Essential Information 16:The Economics of Tobacco (Purchase £1.00)

Smoking is a health problem, the cost of which includes sickness, pain, greed and misery. It is impossible to value such impacts in monetary terms. While cigarette tax is a rich source of revenue to the Treasury, the costs of smoking to the economy include not only the expense of treating diseases caused by smoking but also other costs such as working days lost and social security payments.

Essential Information 17: Tobacco Smuggling (Purchase £1.00)

Approximately one third of internationally traded cigarettes are eventually sold illegally with the avoidance of duty. This reduces the price, increases demand, undermines national tobacco tax policies and, as a result, harms health by increasing tobacco use.

Essential Information 18: The UK Tobacco Industry (Purchase £1.00)

The world's second and fourth largest tobacco companies (excluding the Chinese state tobacco monopoly) are based in the UK. British American Tobacco with 17% of the global market, is the world's second largest tobacco company after US-based Philip Morris which has an 18% share of the world market.

Essential Information 19: Tobacco Advertising and Promotion (Purchase £1.00)

Despite efforts by governments to restrict or ban tobacco advertising, the tobacco industry continues to spend billions of pounds worldwide promoting its hazardous products. Tobacco advertising encourages children to start smoking and reinforces the social acceptability of the habit among adults.

Essential Information 20: Tobacco and the European Union (Purchase £1.00)

Tobacco is the single largest cause of avoidable death in the European Union accounting for more than 650,000 deaths each year - about one in seven of all deaths across the EU. A further 13 million people suffer from a serious disease caused by smoking.

Essential Information 21: Tobacco in the Developing World (Purchase £1.00)

Tobacco consumption has fallen over the past 20 years in most high-income countries such as Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia and most northern European countries. By contrast, tobacco consumption in the developing countries is increasing as tobacco industries shift their marketing to these "emerging markets".

Essential Information 22: Tobacco and the Environment (Purchase £1.00)

From growing the tobacco plant to the disposal of butts and packaging, the whole life cycle of a cigarette takes a heavy toll on the environment. Although the ecological impacts of tobacco are overshadowed by its devastating effects on human health, they are nevertheless considerable and a cause for concern.

Essential Information 23: Smoking and Diabetes (Purchase £1.00)

People with diabetes are at greater risk of raised blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, nerve damage and eye complications. There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that smoking is an independent risk factor for diabetes and that among people with diabetes, smoking aggravates the risk of serious disease and premature death.

Essential Information 24: Stopping smoking - ASH'S 15 Tips (Purchase £1.00)

ASH's top tips to help you stop smoking.

Essential Information 25: Secondhand smoke in the home. (Purchase £1.00)

Children's exposure to secondhand smoke is most likely to take place in the home.  Parental banning of smoking in the home is the only reliable way of reducing exposure to secondhand smoke as partial restrictions are not effective.  

Essential Information 26: Tobacco and Ethnic Minorities (Purchase £1.00)

Smoking rates vary considerably between ethnic groups. This Essential Information factsheet examines the different uses of tobacco and tobacco consumption rates of ethnic minorities in the UK.

Essential Information 27: Smoking and Eye Disease (Purchase £1.00)

Smoking can worsen several eye disorders, particuarly cataracts and age related macular degeneration (AMD), and may lead to blindness.

Essential Information 27: Smoking and Eye Disease (large print version) (Purchase £1.00)

Essential Information on Smoking and Eye Disease (large print version).

Essential Information 28: Waterpipes (Purchase £1.00)