The tobacco companies hid the truth about the hazards and addictiveness of cigarettes from the American public. Industry double-talk notwithstanding, warnings about the health risks of smoking go back hundreds of years. In every generation, tobacco's opponents have echoed him, attributing a long list of maladies to smoking. Persuasive scientific evidence of tobacco's hazards, which began to emerge in the early 1930s, has received widespread attention since the '50s. Likewise, the difficulty of giving up the tobacco habit has been common knowledge for centuries.
Tobacco is tobacco.
Although all tobacco products pose some health risks, cigarettes are by far the most hazardous. Cigars and pipes are considerably less dangerous. By one estimate, smokeless tobacco is 98 percent safer than cigarettes. People smoke because of advertising. There is remarkably little evidence that advertising plays an important role in getting people to smoke, as opposed to getting them to smoke a particular brand.