What did your New Year’s resolutions include except losing weight and reducing debts? If you enjoy cigarettes, I bet you also promised yourself to finally quit smoking. 2009 could be the perfect time to give up to this bad habit!

"This is the year I'm finally going to quit smoking," said 25-year-old Janet Hembrick, 35, of Chattanooga.  I bet everybody heard at least one smoker saying that. A growing number of tobacco users promises to renounce to their unhealthy habit but how many of them really succeed?

Dr. Norman Edelman, the American Lung Association's chief medical officer, said that tobacco users have dissimilar experiences when they cease smoking. Some may feel weary, others may feel dizzy. Nervousness and irritability may also be experienced, as well as headaches. Besides, people on the verge of quitting may long to sweets. “It's important to know that these feelings are normal, and may last for several weeks, but eventually they will pass," Dr. Edelman said.

Nicotine addiction can be fatal. A new study published today in the journal Neurology suggests the fact that a family history of stroke makes tobacco users up to six times more prone to also experience one.

According to the U.N. World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer, by 2030, an estimated 26.4 million individuals each year may be diagnosed with cancer and about 17 million people may die from it. Currently, cardiovascular diseases rank as the world’s No. 1 killer but cancer will pass heart disease by 2010.

Cancer accounts for only 50 percent of the smoking-related deaths. Tobacco use is also a major cause of stroke, heart disease, emphysema and bronchitis, and in women, it is linked to an augmented risk of miscarriage, delivering a baby before 37 weeks of gestation, infant death and low birth weight in infants.