Youth Week - July 2003
4 July, 7pm: Summary of Pastor Woest's address on smoking

Pastor Woest lost his voicebox after 33 years of smoking, and now goes around warning people of the dangers of smoking.

A cigarette contains 4000 chemicals, of which 43 cause cancer. Some are:

Acetone (a paint remover, which keeps it burning),
Carbon Monoxide (result of non-complete combustion), which destroys oxygen in body,
Tar, which stick to lungs and inhibits breathing.
Nicotine, which is the most dangerous. It is an extremely addictive drug and used commercially in insecticides. 20 cigarettes' nicotine added on the tongue at once will cause a heart attack within 30s. 80% of heart attacks are smoking related.

Smoking is the no 1 killer in South Africa. In 2001, 7000 South Africans died from AIDS, whereas 25000 died from smoking, of which 3000 were passive smokers. The most common ways of death from smoking are emphysema and lung cancer.