World No Tobacco Day is celebrated every year on May 31. This year, in June, the “strictest ever” tobacco control regulations will be implemented, and smoking will be banned in public places, indoor environments in workplaces and public transportation throughout Beijing; outdoor smoking will also be restricted, such as no smoking in line, and so on. Violators will be fined a high amount of money. I usually get this question every time I sit in the clinic: I have a bad liver and can’t drink alcohol, so can I smoke? Smoking is commonly thought to be very harmful to the respiratory tract, lungs, and cardiovascular system, but in fact it is also very harmful to the liver. If you don’t control the amount of smoking, it can promote the development of chronic liver disease and even liver cancer as time goes on. Smoking is hazardous to health because cigarettes contain more than a thousand substances that are harmful to the body, the most familiar is carbon monoxide, nicotine, however, there are alcohols, phenols, alkanes, olefins, carbonyl compounds, heavy metal elements and other substances that are seriously harmful to the body. So when we smoke, in addition to the smoke that is inhaled into the lungs, a portion of it will enter the digestive system and then flow through the blood circulation to the whole body. So why is it said that smoking hurts the liver? The nicotine in cigarettes needs to be metabolized by the lungs as well as the liver, and if a lot of smoking is done, then it is bound to increase the workload of the liver in detoxification. Nicotine can cause excitement, which can cause blood vessels to constrict and increase the viscosity of the blood. This will reduce the blood supply to the liver, resulting in a lack of nutrients to the liver. Another point is that because carbon monoxide enters the bloodstream through the lungs, it binds to red blood cells, which causes oxygen deprivation in the liver and is detrimental to the repair and regeneration of liver cells. To sum up, smoking is seriously harmful to the liver, so why not take advantage of this comprehensive ban on smoking to quit it?