This brings us to the topic today of our chat. About 1.1 billion people aged 15 years or older now smoke in the world. There are 4 million deaths a year from tobacco. As we move further into the 21st century more than 100 million people will die from tobacco-related illnesses. That total will exceed the total from AIDS, tuberculosis, automobile accidents, maternal mortality, homicide, and suicide combined.
Tobacco is an enormous problem across the world.
It is very much a problem as a result of export of tobacco from the developed world to the developing world. There is a strong economic influence on what is happening. Increasingly, we are realizing that problems of health cannot be looked upon in isolation in terms of individual countries, they have an impact on everyone, and hence we use the term global. I am particularly interested in studies to help people quit smoking and issues on the health effects from using tobacco. Coronary artery disease caused by cigarette smoking results in many more deaths than lung cancer.