Information about cigarettes

Rick Tosches writes today:

Cigarettes cause 480,000 deaths each year in the U.S. Ten times more Americans have died from cigarettes than have died in all the wars fought by the U.S. in its history. Smoking causes more deaths each year than HIV, illegal drug use, alcohol use, car crashes and gunfire. Combined.

Smoking, as we were told in 1964, causes lung cancer, heart disease, stroke and emphysema, to name the biggies.

Cigarettes contain more than 7,000 chemicals, including formaldehyde, which is used to embalm the dead. It also contains cadmium (used to make batteries), arsenic, carbon monoxide (car exhaust), hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, butane and toluene (also found in paint thinner.)

Read more here.