Here at home, despite restrictions on advertising, smoking ranks as the number-one cause of cancer deaths, with no letup in sight. It has passed breast cancer as the leading cause of malignancy death in women. The somber facts are that over four million people will die this year from smoking-related causes, one every eight seconds. As we move past the millennium into 2030, that becomes 10 million, one every three seconds. With this trend, it will eventually cause more death than any other disease.
Tobacco is a silent killer.
It does its lethal work three and four decades after peak consumption. In the last half of this century, more people died from tobacco than in all the wars combined. Of the 500 million people alive today, about one-tenth will be killed by tobacco. By 2020, this will rise to 22 percent. Tobacco is linked to at least 25 different diseases.