In particular, health-care professionals can assist patients to stop smoking by counseling them about quitting. This report summarizes the results of that survey.
Cigarette smoking remains the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States.
Based on current and past smoking patterns, the public health burden of smoking-related cancers is expected to continue during the next several decades. In addition, because lung cancer recently surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer deaths among women, death rates for lung cancer are compared with those for breast cancer. Also included is a table on deaths associated with specified notifiable diseases reported to CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.