Smoking

The causal relationship between cigarette smoking and the reduced health of active, as well [Page 1617]as passive, smokers is well established. Global tobacco use causes nearly five million deaths per year, or one death every 6.5 seconds. Of the 1.5 billion regular smokers alive today, half are expected to die prematurely from tobacco-related disease, and half of them will do so between the ages of 35 and 69 years. Although the toll is somewhat less for nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work, their risk of developing lung cancer or heart disease is approximately 25 percent higher than that experienced by people who are not routinely exposed to secondhand smoke. Tobacco is the only consumer product that causes death to the primary and secondhand consumer when used as intended by its manufacturers.

Globally, about 15 billion cigarettes are sold daily, or 10 million every minute. One in five teens, aged 13–15 years, smoke. Roughly 100,000 children start smoking every day, half of whom live in Asia. Evidence shows that about half of the people who start smoking in adolescence will go on to smoke for the next 15–20 years of their lives. East Asia and the Pacific have the highest smoking rate, where nearly two-thirds of the male population smokes.

A vast majority of the world's smokers—900 million people (84 percent of the world's total)—live in developing and transitional economy countries. A directly proportional relationship between the lung cancer incidence rate and the cigarette consumption rate has been reported in data for 61 nations.

China is the world's largest consumer and producer of unmanufactured tobacco, producing roughly 2.2 million tons (two million metric tons) of dry weight tobacco annually, and consuming slightly more at 2.4 million tons (2.2 metric tons). Brazil is the second largest producer at about 880,000 tons (800,000 metric tons) but is a lower than average consumer. Brazil is followed by India at about 660,000 tons (600,000 metric tons), and the United States at 440,000 tons (400,000 metric tons). Both India and the United States exhibit a 20 percent approximate differential between what they produce and what they consume, with India consuming slightly less than they produce, and the United States consuming slightly more.

China is also the world's largest cigarette producer, producing roughly 30 percent of the cigarettes manufactured annually, followed by the United States at 13 percent, Japan at 4.5 percent, and Indonesia at 3.8 percent.

Although cigarette smoking was definitively linked to increased lung cancer risk in the 1950s, it was not until 1964 that the U.S. Surgeon General released a report stating that smoking causes cancer and other diseases. At that time, public health professionals proposed the logical hypothesis that reducing the exposure of smokers to particulate matter in cigarette smoke would reduce the risk of developing lung cancer. The report concluded that those smokers who were unable to quit should make every effort to lower their dose of tobacco smoke. Cigarette manufacturers initially responded to this new public perception of health risk by adding filters to cigarettes, and then offering filtered cigarettes that delivered less tar. The term tar is an industry-coined term used to describe the total particulate matter in smoke, minus the water and nicotine.

...