The great American smokeout 2009: five good reasons to stop smoking

1.  Your lungs will love you.  Smoke damages the alveoli in the lungs.  The alveoli are the tiny air sacs that take in the oxygen and help the lungs exchange gases in the blood.  When they are damaged, there is no oxygen exchange, which is why people who have smoked a long time usually develop emphysema, a disease of the lungs in which it is hard to breathe properly.  Emphysema often is also referred to as COPD, or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, something that the television commercials seem to be focusing on nowadays.  Although there is no cure for COPD, the site above in the link says that the only way to stop its progression is to stop smoking.

2.  You will be more appealing to people.  A smoker's breath and the smell of his/her clothing is often stale from the old smoke.  That can be very offensive to some people.  Additionally, a smoker's teeth are often yellow.  With the current emphasis on white teeth, stopping the smoking habit is one way to improve the brightness.

3.  You will live a longer, healthier life.  Statistics have firmly linked many diseases to smoking.  It increases a person's chance of lung cancer and emphysema, as we all know.  But did you know that smoking also makes it more likely that you could have leukemia, cataracts, pneumonia, and kidney, cervix, stomach and pancreas cancers?

4.  You'll save money.  Cigarettes are expensive.  Have you ever added up the total yearly expense?  What else could you do with that money?  It's estimated that you could pay for a Caribbean cruise after saving the money from just the first year of not smoking!

5.  Your face (and even the rest of your body) will look more youthful because you'll not develop the deep wrinkles smokers always seem to have earlier than those who do not smoke.