How deadly is smoking?
The number one preventable cause of death, meaning someone wouldn't need to die of this, is tobacco. Because of the increasing rate in certain countries of smoking, especially in women, this rate is going to increase. So this is a huge global problem, it's greater than suicide, combined with homicides, combined with HIV and AIDS, and combined with motor vehicle accidents. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, if you put all, alcoholism, chemical dependency, you put all of those deaths together, tobacco still kills more people than all of them. It kills 40 percent of people with heart disease. It is the number one cause of cancer. It is causing 80 to 90 percent of lung disease from emphazema and bronchitis, asthma deaths, you just go on and on down the ten and fifteen most common causes of death and tobacco is related to almost all of them. Does cigarettes promote other risk factors? Yes, in fact when you combine it with diabetes or hypercholesterolemia or hypertension, you put all those risks together, tobacco's like lighting the match to set the fuse for premature death. So it's not doing it just by itself. It's doing it because of lifestyle disorders and risk factors that really are adding up to a huge burden of death in the western world and in developing countries.
