However, a special section of the study focusing on lung cancer and smoking reports that, unless the increase in adolescent smoking can be reversed, declining lung cancer rates are likely to start increasing again. We must keep fighting this disease with everything we've got, which is why we again are urging Congress to support our proposal that Medicare patients participate in cancer clinical trials. This report also highlights the need to address the problem of tobacco use by young people.
Lung cancer causes more deaths than any other cancer.
The greatest decrease occurred after 1992, the year in which incidence rates peaked. This trend reversed a pattern of increasing incidence rates from 1973 to 1990, and continued the downward trend first documented in last year's report. From 1990 to 1996, cancer death rates have been falling on average 0.6 percent per year. By far, the greatest decline in cancer incidence rates has been among men, who overall have higher rates of cancer than women. From 1990 to 1996, the decline in the cancer incidence rate was greater for men than for women.