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This year, how about making a truly meaningful, life-altering New Year’s resolution? If you’re one of 44 million American smokers, we have one for you: Try separating the smoke from your nicotine fix. Doing so will save your life. That’s because the deadly poisons in a burning cigarette and the spectrum of devastating health effects come from the smoke that’s created, and not from the nicotine itself. That fact is the biggest misconception about tobacco smoking. Understanding this key fact, which is highlighted in ACSH’s “The Effects of Nicotine on Human Health,” is the first major step addicted smokers can take to break free from the insidiously deadly grip of cigarettes. Smokers smoke for the nicotine…but they die from the smoke. Nicotine is not a carcinogen. And it is not toxic in the amount delivered by a cigarette. Many smokers, and even some physicians, falsely believe that nicotine is the primary cancer-causing agent in cigarette smoking. “This publication clearly demonstrates that it is the inhaled products of combustion of a lighted cigarette — the smoke —which causes disease and death, and not the nicotine,” says Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health. “All smokers need to know this.”