William F. Harrison

About the author: William F. Harrison is an obstetrician and gynecologist who practices at the Fayetteville Women's Clinic in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Habitual cigarette smoking leads to serious health complications, including emphysema, cardiovascular disease, and various lifethreatening cancers. Much of this damage occurs because tobacco smoke slowly destroys the cleansing mechanism in the lungs, allowing toxins to remain in prolonged contact with lung tissue. Moreover, the damage caused by exposure to tobacco smoke progresses more rapidly after many years of smoking, eventually resulting in the illnesses that cause more than 400,000 annual deaths in the United States alone.

The consequences of smoking

What smokers have not yet come to terms with is that if they continue smoking, the probability of developing one or more of the major complications of smoking is 100%. It absolutely will happen. They will develop chronic bronchitis, laryngitis...