Smoking in Turkey causes more deaths than traffic accidents

The Turkish Association for Fighting Smoking recently released a statistical report on the harmful effects of smoking, stating that 115,000 people have died in Turkey due to diseases caused by smoking in 2011, while 4,000 people died in traffic accidents.

One of the founders of the Turkish Association for Fighting Smoking, Dr. Zafer Sadi Özok, told the Anatolia news agency that a smoker takes a total of seven kilograms of tar into his body by smoking one pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years, and that tobacco smoke contains 4,000 harmful substances, including cyanide.

The association's report says the number of deaths caused by smoking is 13 times higher than that caused by narcotics use. The number of deaths caused by smoking worldwide has reached 5,500,000 annually, and one person dies of smoking-related causes every six seconds.

The report also says that woman smokers age 15 times faster than non-smoking women and that 80 percent of premature births and miscarriages arise from smoking. Ten percent of the babies born to mothers who smoke are born with mental defects, and the likelihood of a mother who smokes giving birth to a disabled baby is 65 times greater than mothers who don't smoke.

Every smoker who smokes in the presence of other people inflicts the effects of passive smoking on them. One cigarette destroys 2.5 milligrams of vitamin C, which greatly decreases the body's resistance to illness.

Özok says that with new legislation passed in 2009 which prohibits smoking in indoor areas, the number of smokers in Turkey has decreased 13 percent, and 16,000 fewer people died due to heart attacks caused by smoking last year than in the previous year.


/World Bulletin/