Tobacco Control Quotes

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.

He lit a cigarette and handed it to me. I inhaled. Coughed. Wheezed. Gasped for breath. Coughed again. Considered vomiting. Grabbed the swinging bench, head spinning, and threw the cigarette to the ground and stomped on it, convinced my Great Perhaps did not involve cigarettes.

… Smoking sets a bad example.

My mother, Marnie Fahr Steyer, was a lifelong smoker - up to three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day. I like to think that, if Mom were still with us today, she'd be happy with the strides we've made to protect our children from the ongoing health crisis of tobacco addiction.

Cigarettes and coffee, man, that's a combination.

They're talking about banning cigarette smoking now in any place that's used by ten or more people in a week, which, I guess, means that Madonna can't even smoke in bed.

If there is a good case to be made for the illegalization of drugs, there is a better case to be made for the illegalization for tobacco and alcohol.

I got this big fear of doing smoking jokes in my act and showing up five years from now goin' [puts mic to his neck and speaks as if he had a mechanical larynx] 'good evening everybody, remember me, smoking's bad. [puts cigarette to neck and mimics smoking it] Eeww. You ever seen somebody do that? I've seen someone do that. Let me tell you something — if you're smoking out of a hole in your neck [mimics it again] I'd think about quitting. And that's just me, ya know.

We must help parents protect their children from the gravest health threat that they face -- an epidemic of teen smoking, spread by multimillion dollar marketing campaigns. I challenge Congress -- let's pass bipartisan, comprehensive legislation that will improve public health, protect our tobacco farmers and change the way tobacco companies do business forever. Let's do what it takes to bring teen smoking down. Let's raise the price of cigarettes by up to $1.50 a pack over the next 10 years with penalties on the tobacco industry if it keeps marketing to our children.

I do want to make a special appeal to women movie stars to, I think, have a special responsibility these days to stop smoking, not to do it up on screen because the example that's being set is really an awful example.

Thousands and tens of thousands die of diseases of the lungs generally brought on by tobacco smoking.... How is it possible to be otherwise? Tobacco is a poison

I'm not really a heavy smoker any more. I only get through two lighters a day now.

I found out that smoking is the leading cause of statistics.

[Worldwide] … tobacco use … kills more people annually than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.

I never can understand how anyone can not smoke it deprives a man of the best part of life. With a good cigar in his mouth a man is perfectly safe, nothing can touch him, literally.

I’ve been hosting the Today Show for 22 years. When I started, marijuana was illegal, and you could smoke cigarettes anywhere you wanted.

The tobacco companies knew quite early on the addictive nature of their product.

Oh, I did stop smoking a long time ago.

… There’s a lot of [tobacco industry] financial clout up here, and they do their best to reward their friends and punish their enemies …. They’re not really trying to accomplish an agenda, they’re just trying to stop one from ever being mounted against them.

Three cigarettes in, your body already craves it. It is that addictive.

If somebody invented cigarettes today, the government would not legalize them.

In 2011, at least a third of middle school and high school students who smoked cigars used flavored little cigars. Six states - Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Wisconsin - already have youth cigar smoking rates that are the same or higher than youth cigarette smoking.

Why should we be letting people smoke their cigars in their comfortable chairs in Raqqa?

Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behavior and practically the only one that is entirely against nature. Can you imagine a cow or any animal taking a mouthful of smoldering straw then breathing in the smoke and blowing it out through its nostrils?

To some extent … everybody is resistant to change. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody that was opposed to the smoking ban … All of Western Europe followed New York City. Many of the states around here did. Every major city, including in the tobacco-growing states in the United States, did. Brazil is smoke-free. Mexico City is smoke-free. All of France, Italy, Spain, England—they’re all smoke-free.