Smoking is bad. That’s what we’ve been told by parents, teachers and doctors for years and years. But that doesn’t mean that teens who get sucked into smoking are bad. Smoking is addictive. Most of us know this, and we’ve heard that smoking is a leading cause of death in the world.

But many don’t know that teen smokers as young as 13 already suffer from the same shortness of breath that our grandparents may feel walking up stairs! And smokers produce twice as much phlegm as non-smokers. I’m uncomfortable with phlegm for just a few days when I have a cold. These are the kinds of things smokers experience as teenagers, and smoking straight into adulthood puts you at greater risk for heart disease and stroke. If you’re smoking now, you may already show signs of blood vessel damage.

Smoking & Sexual Health

If you’re like me and always associate smoking with a hacking cough and a raspy voice, you’ll probably be shocked to learn how it affects every single aspect of your health.
Cigarettes can severely affect your reproductive system, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Toxins in cigarettes can reduce the quality of sperm and are also harmful to the ovaries. In women, smoking contributes to early menopause and infertility—the inability to get pregnant. You may not be ready for a baby now, but you won’t want to be addicted to nicotine and unable to quit when you or your partner are ready to try to have a child. When it comes to quitting, a good rule is always “the sooner, the better.”

The dangers of smoking aren’t all just a series of potential diseases, though. Nicotine restricts blood vessels in both males and females. Blood that normally flows quickly during sex can’t flow freely when the small blood vessels in the penis or vulva have been severely damaged by smoking. Poor flow can eventually mean a weak erection and a loss of sensation in the genitals. The loss of sexual pleasure might be a good motivation to quit.

Quitting Isn’t Easy

It doesn’t matter why you started. Whether it’s the cliché “peer pressure,” stress relief, a personal reason or one you don’t even remember, you’re in the same boat as millions of other people.

“Most teens who do smoke say they want to quit,” says Kathleen A. Kealey, the administrative manager with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Cancer Prevention Program in Seattle.

Even though quitting isn’t easy, you don’t have to go cold turkey. There are nicotine substitutes in every drugstore and entire sections in bookstores dedicated to quitting. Even with all these ways to stop, breaking the habit can seem impossible. The addictive quality of nicotine is physically overwhelming and failed attempts to quit can be stressful and emotionally upsetting.

If you’ve tried but failed to quit, a smoking cessation program—a program that helps you stop smoking—could help. Kealey worked with a team of counselors and researchers who found that that phone counseling really works to help teens stop smoking.

Get Support

Counseling motivates people to quit and helps those who have already quit keep up good habits so they don’t start smoking again, according to Kealey. Teens can get this type of help for free by calling their state’s tobacco quit line. Calling a quit line and getting connected to a counselor may be especially helpful if talking to your parents just isn’t an option. Quit-line counselors are trained to help people identify obstacles to stopping smoking.

“They are very objective and nonjudgmental. They won’t think poorly of, or be disappointed with, someone having difficulty quitting,” says Kealey.

It’s scary to think about how something we start doing in high school could control how we live our lives and how long we live them 20 to 40 years from now. The truth is that the earlier you quit smoking, the less of your life you’ll have to spend trying to stop and the less damage smoking will do to your body.

Visit Teenquit.com for a list of tobacco quit lines across the country.