A single cig ties up about 10-15% of your hemoglobin with carbon monoxide. That blood is out of use for hours until it's finally gotten rid of....takes a long time. This taps into your air consumption.
Heart attacks while diving are one of the major causes of scuba death. Smoking is one of the major causes of cardiovascular/heart disease. Do the math.
Everyone pretty much knows about lung cancer and emphysema/COPD. These are diseases associated with constant long-term smoking. Both diseases will destroy your quality of like and untimately kill you. You may not necessarily get cancer (that's a statistical game), but it's pretty much guaranteed that you will get some level of COPD associated with time, type of cigarettes + the amount you smoke, and your genetics. Think of it as 'erosion'. A little rain, not much erosion-a lot of rain, a lot of erosion. It happens. No way around it.
Everyone has to eat. No one HAS to smoke. When you overeat you (mostly) only screw up yourself (Fat people deal with social stigma ALL the time, maybe worse than smoking). When you smoke you potentially mess with the air of everyone around you, thus the legislation to keep smokers seriously segregated from people not wanting to have that imposed upon them. I grew up with 2 parents and lots of relatives that smoked. Now I'm kind of amazed when I see someone smoking. I don't see that as a bad thing.
It trashes your skin over time via constant vasoconstriction. Look at any old smoker, they always look older and worse than non-smokers of similar age. It's almost the only effective argument you can use on young women smokers that they might listen to.
Like it or not as smoking has been pushed farther away from wide spread social acceptance and public places it is now being seen as primarily a habit of lower socioeconomic status, and frankly lower intelligence. If you are under 20 and smoke you probably think you are "cool/tough/rebel" or some other such adolescent posturing. Over 20 smokers pretty much know they are hooked and stupid for starting.
In the last 20 years of my career in Respiratory Therapy I worked for a home care company. The majority of their services was supplying oxygen to people. 99% of those people were smokers. Of hundreds that I talked to over 2 decades only 1 (yes, that's ONE), took full responsibility for it. All the rest had all kinds of lame and completely ridiculous excuses. FWIW, with RARE exception, once serious health circumstances stick that O2 cannula in their nose, It's a major struggle just to get to the bathroom, and the grim reaper himself indicates they might find it prudent to stop smoking
now...mostly they do. Stopping is possible. It's just a matter of sufficient motivation.
(Note-I'm well aware that 'fear mongering' like the last paragraph is almost completely useless as motivation for smoking cessation. It just makes you anxious and you go out for a smoke.
)
...crap...
