There were times when he would crush a pack of cigarettes in his powerful hands and fling it across the room, vowing that he had smoked his last. Soon, though, he would be drawn back to smoking first secretly, then openly. Bill died of cancer 15 years ago, after months of dreadful pain. If he had not been a smoker, he would possibly be alive today. Bill's death, tragic though it was for his family, is not unique.
Tobacco use is the major preventable cause of disease worldwide.
If present trends continue, in 20 years smoking will be the world's number one cause of death and disability, killing more people than AIDS, tuberculosis, maternal mortality, motor vehicle accidents, suicide, and homicide combined. Yet those who smoke them are everywhere. That means roughly one third of the world's adults. Analysts estimate that while tobacco companies now pay hundreds of millions of dollars because of lawsuits brought against them, this amount is small compared with their multibillion-dollar profits. In the United States alone, an estimated 1.5 billion cigarettes roll off production lines in tobacco factories each day.