• You can substantially reduce your risk of disease and death, even if you’re currently over 65 years old.
• Smokers under 50 years old can cut their risk of dying within the next 15 years by about 50%.
• Your risk of respiratory infections falls to normal immediately after quitting.
• Your smoking related respiratory symptoms and exercise tolerance improve immediately after quitting.
• Your risk of heart attack gets cut in half within one year of quitting.
• Your risk of stroke returns to normal within 5 years of quitting.
• Your risk of lung cancer gets cut in half in 10 years.
• Your risk of heart disease returns to normal in 15 years.
• Non-Smokers live an average of 7 years longer than smokers do.
• Your Quality-of-Life is significantly improved when you quit smoking.
• Smokers spend more time and money on health-related issues than non-smokers do.
• If you are currently a 35 year old female smoking an average of 1 ½ packs of cigarettes per day, you will spend $55,434 over your lifetime for cigarettes alone (in 1998 dollars). It’s about $45,579 for men.
• If you invest your annual savings in an IRA at 7% average, you would have an additional $200,000 in your nest egg at retirement.