Short term effects

• Addiction to nicotine (The younger an adolescent is when he begins to smoke, the more severe his level of nicotine addiction is likely to be.)
• The risk of using other drugs
• Blood vessels constrict (narrow) and this decreases blood flow which causes a rise in blood pressure.
• A slight drop in body temperature
• Shortness of breath
• Carbon monoxide replaces oxygen carried by the blood
• An increase in the amount of acid released into the stomach
• A decrease in the formation of urine
• Decrease in the ability to exercise
• Sense of taste and smell are dulled
• Teeth, fingers, and lips become stained yellow
  

• Skin    Smoking makes you look older. It makes your skin dry and leathery. It will wrinkle faster than if you don't smoke. You won't get skin cancer from smoking, but if you should come down from skin cancer from another source, you'll be more likely to die from it because smoking weakens your immune system.
• Hair Loss    A study in the British Medical Journal has found that smokers are twice as likely to lose their hair and almost four times as likely to have premature gray hair. Smoking messes up your immune system; one result can be hair loss.
• Brain   When cigarette smoke is inhaled, it carries nicotine, a highly addictive drug, into the lungs where it is quickly absorbed into the blood and carried to the heart and brain. Nicotine is addictive as heroin, and it alters how the brain works. It acts on brain cells that influence: mood, concentration, learning, and alertness.
• Cataracts    Smoking causes cataracts. A cataract is a clouding of the lens of the eye. It is one of the leading causes of blindness throughout the world. The more person smokes, the greater the chance of getting cataracts. • Hearing Loss Smoking constricts (narrows) the blood vessels to the eardrums. This causes smokers to start to lose their hearing earlier than people who don't smoke.
• Mouth   Smoking causes wrinkles around the mouth and on the lips, but worse than that smoking causes many kinds of cancers, including those of the lips, mouth, tongue, and throat. Smoking makes it harder for saliva to remove germs in the mouth. This contributes to gum disease, bad breath, discolored teeth, the loss of teeth, and a decrease in the ability to taste and smell.
• Throat   People who use tobacco are at risk of developing tumors of the throat. Surgical removal of the tumor, including all or part of the vocal cords (laryngectomy) may be necessary in some cases. If a laryngectomy is required, a surgical prosthesis (artificial vocal cords) may be implanted, voice aids may be used, or speech therapy may be recommended to teach alternative methods of speaking.
• Heart Disease   Smoking reduces the amount of oxygen to the heart muscle. At the same time, it makes the heart beat faster, which increases its demand for oxygen. This is one reason why smokers are short for breath and have chest pain. Almost half of the smoking deaths in the U.S. are due to cardiovascular diseases. (Diseases having to do with the heart) Clogged arteries occur more often in smokers than in non-smokers. Smokers who have a heart attack have less chance of surviving than people who don't smoke.
• Lungs   Among the many lung ailments smoking causes: chronic bronchitis (the build up of puss and mucus, making you cough a lot), emphysema (makes the little air sacs in you lungs swell and burst) and lung cancer.
• Stomach   Smoking has been shown to have harmful effects on all parts of the digestive system, contributing to such common disorders as heartburn and peptic ulcers.
• Other Cancers   Smoking also causes cancers all over the body: sinus, brain, breast, uterus, kidney, bladder, thyroid, leukemia, lymph glands, pancreas, and cervix.
  
• Impotency   Men who smoke have increased risk of impotency. (The inability to have an erection.)
• Problems in Pregnancy   Women who smoke have a greater risk of having babies that aren't healthy. They run a greater risk of having of miscarriages, stillbirths, and premature and/or low-birth-weight babies
• Early Death   Often death occurs 20 or more years early.

Young people offer the following reasons for not dating smokers:

• They have bad breath.
• You can't get close to someone with a cigarette.
• It tastes bad to kiss them.
• They cough a lot.
• You have to breathe their smoke.
• Their hair and clothes smell.
• Their teeth are yellow.
• They have dirty-looking hands.
• It's not as much fun because smokers avoid physical activity; when they do something physical, they get tired too easily.

Source: Krantzler, N. & Miner, K. (1996) Tobacco Health Facts. Santa Crus, CA: ETR Associates. (I got it from The Child Therapy News, Vol. 4, No. 4 Apr 1997)

• More than 50,000 research studies have linked cigarettes with fatal diseases such as lung cancer, emphysema, strokes, and heart attacks.
• In the twentieth century tobacco has killed more people than war.
• Out of 1,000 20-year olds who smoke today, over their lifetimes, 12 will die in car accidents, 6 will be murdered and 500 will die from smoking-related causes. ("Mortality From Smoking In developed Countries," Imperial Research Fund, Oxford University Press, 1994)