Other dangers and important facts

 

Smoking during pregnancy can affect the unborn child and babies are more likely to be born underweight, premature or stillborn.

Passive smoking, where a person is subject to breathing in the cigarette smoke of others, can cause lung damage, including cancer and heart disease.

Children exposed to tobacco smoke in the home are more likely to get croup, pneumonia and bronchitis in their first year of life; to develop asthma and suffer from more frequent and more severe attacks; and to become regular smokers themselves.

One in six deaths in New Zealand is related to tobacco use.

Approximately 4,500 New Zealanders die every year from tobacco - that is more than from road crashes, suicide, skin cancers, drowning, homicide and AIDS combined.

One out of two people who smoke die, on average, 14 years earlier than their counterparts who have never smoked.