About Alcohol, Tobacco and Marijuana

Tobacco

Tobacco contains a substance called nicotine, which is very addictive (meaning it's hard to stop putting nicotine into your body once you've started). 

Cigarette smoking is the most common form of tobacco use. Cigarettes and cigars are especially bad for you because tobacco smoke puts poisons into your mouth, throat, lungs and bloodstream – as well as pollutes the air around you and others.

Smoking also affects your appearance. Short-term exposure to tobacco smoke can cause:

• Yellow teeth and fingernails
• Bad breath and mouth sores
• Stinky odors on hair, clothes, furniture, and in the air

Long-term exposure to tobacco smoke can cause:

• Cancer – especially in the lungs, mouth, and throat
• A strong increase in the chances of heart attacks and strokes

480,000 cigarette smokers die each year because of smoking cigarettes.

For more information about the risks of long-term smoking, visit Facts About Smoking.

Chewing tobacco, or smokeless tobacco, is also very damaging. Tobacco chewers are even more likely than smokers to get mouth, throat, cheek or stomach cancer – they usually have mouth sores and yellow teeth, too.

Vapes or e-cigarettes, turn liquid nicotine into vapor that is inhaled. Like regular cigarettes, e-cigarettes and vaping are addictive and harmful.

Alcohol

Alcohol is found in beer, wine and liquor. Drinks in the liquor category usually contain more alcohol than beer or wine, but all forms of alcohol are dangerous. 

Drinking alcohol can cause:

• Bad breath
• Weight gain (alcoholic drinks have a lot of calories)
• Vomiting or nausea
• Clumsiness and loss of coordination
• Difficulty concentrating
• Poor judgment
• Blackouts, which means that after the alcohol wears off you can't remember anything that happened while you were under the influence of alcohol
• Death, if you drink too much

Frequent alcohol consumption (drinking) can cause:

• Addiction
• Cancer, because it travels around your body through your blood
• Brain damage
• Blackouts or passing out

Marijuana

Marijuana – which is commonly called pot, dope or weed – is made from a dried plant called cannabis. People either smoke it like a cigarette (called a joint) or add it to certain foods. 

The feeling after smoking or eating marijuana is called a "high". The main chemical that makes you feel funny is called THC.

Marijuana joints have more of the cancer-causing chemicals than cigarettes. Smoking five joints in a single week is as bad as smoking an entire pack of cigarettes every day for a week!

Using marijuana can make you feel:

• Silly or giggly
• Very hungry
• Off balance and sick, even hours after the high wears off
• Unable to use good judgment
• Forgetful

If you keep using marijuana, it can cause:

• Yellow fingernails and bad breath
• Addiction
• Damage to your memory
• Challenges to learning and concentrating, making you do worse in school
• Cancer in the lungs, mouth, and throat

Reviewed by: J. Sampson, RN

Last reviewed: August 2019