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Nicotine: a powerful central nervous system stimulant found naturally in the tobacco leaf, is classified as a drug. Nicotine is one of the main ingredients in tobacco. In higher doses, nicotine is extremely poisonous. It is commonly used as an insecticide.

What's in a cigarette?

70% of teen smokers say they wish they had never started.

Each year, smoking kills more people than AIDS, alcohol abuse, car accidents, murders, suicides, illegal drugs and fires combined.

More than 200,000 people under 18 alive today in NC will die prematurely due to tobacco-related illnesses.

95% of all teenage smokers think they will have quit within five years, but only 25% succeeded, eight years later.

Smoking causes 87% of all lung cancer cases.

Most smokers make an average of three or four quit attempts before becoming long-term non-smokers.

Two-thirds of the smoke from a burning cigarette is not inhaled by the smoker but enters the surrounding environment. The contaminated air is inhaled by anyone in that area.

A non-smoker breathing second-hand smoke can be exposed to 4,000 different chemicals, 50 of which are associated with or known to cause cancer.

Second-hand smoke has twice as much nicotine and tar as the smoke that smokers inhale. It also has five times the carbon monoxide which decreases the amount of oxygen in your blood.