In the United States, the number of cigarettes smoked per person has been falling for two decades, dropping from 2,810 in 1980 to 1,633 in 1999, a decline of 42 percent. Worldwide, where the downturn lags that of the United States by roughly a decade, usage has dropped from the historical high of 1,027 cigarettes smoked per person in 1990 to 915 in 1999, a fall of 11 percent. Indeed, smoking is on the decline in nearly all the major cigarette consuming countries, including such bastions of smoking as France, China, and Japan. Evidence of the damaging effects of cigarette smoking on human health continues to accumulate. Today there are some 25 known tobacco-related diseases, including heart disease, strokes, respiratory illnesses, several forms of cancer, and male impotence.
Smoking takes a heavy human toll.
In China, smoking takes an estimated 2,000 lives per day, the equivalent of having five fully loaded jumbo jets crash each day with no survivors. The decline in smoking in the United States was initially triggered by the Surgeon General s report on smoking and health, which was first issued in 1964. Published nearly every year since then, it has spawned thousands of studies worldwide on the effect of smoking on health. These studies and the media coverage of their findings have raised public awareness of the health effects of smoking not only in the United States but throughout the world. Over the years, mounting evidence of the effect of smoking on health gradually undermined the tobacco industry s steadfast denial of such a link.