But unlike most microbial plagues, damage to the human body from cigarettes progresses slowly. Approximately five trillion cigarettes are produced each year, or 1,000 cigarettes for each man, woman, and child on earth. Fifty-two percent of cigarettes are consumed in Asia. Most of this excess mortality is caused by tobacco. Overall, more than one-third of all regular cigarette smokers, many of these still in middle age, will be killed by the habit.
Tobacco also causes excess morbidity.
Children whose parents smoke experience more respiratory symptoms and have an increased frequency of bronchitis and pneumonia. Most of this increase will occur in developing countries. For men, the epidemic of premature death from tobacco has already become substantial in all developed countries. The death rates in middle-aged men from all causes are especially high in eastern Europe, one major reason for this being tobacco. For example, at the projected 1995 death rates, about half of all Polish men aged 35 can expect to die before age 70, with about half these deaths attributed to tobacco.