Cancer, Cancer Treatment

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Teenagers who underestimate the risks of smoking — or overestimate the social value — are substantially more likely than their peers to take up the habit, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among 395 high school students they followed for two years, those who thought the health risks of smoking were fairly low, or the social benefits fairly high, were about three times more likely than their peers to start smoking.

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For the first time on record, the percentage of U.S. adults who smoke cigarettes has fallen below 20 percent, a new report shows.

An estimated 19.8 percent of American adults - 43.4 million individuals - were smokers in 2007. The new data is a percentage point below the 2006 figure and followed three years of modest progress, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to Thomas Glynn of the American Cancer Society, cigarette smoking rates were now the lowest since WorldWarI. “We’ve begun to come full circle on this,” he said.

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Warning: “Smoking is injurious to health”
There is a dictum that “everything has its harm and benefits”, but does smoking has any beneficial effect? Yes, it has. Those are too insignificant in comparison to the injury it causes to our body.
Its easy to enumerate them .There are so few of them. They are:
1. Smoking decreases appetite(but no evidence of benefits to overweight ones)
2. Risk of ulcerative colitis is reduced in smokers.
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