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Cigarette smoking is known to be the cause of the great majority of lung cancers.
The risk of developing the disease increases with the number of cigarettes smoked, and starting to smoke at a young age. Filtered and low tar cigarettes may reduce the risk slightly but it is still far greater than that of a non-smoker. If a person stops smoking, the risk of lung cancer is greatly reduced so that after about fifteen years his or her chances of developing the disease are similar to that of a non-smoker. It now appears that inhaling other people's cigarette smoke, which is known as passive smoking , slightly increases the risk of lung disease and cancer, although the risk is still much less than if you smoke yourself. Although pipe and cigar smokers have a lower risk of lung cancer than cigarette smokers they are at a much greater risk than non-smokers.