Smoking Killed Five Million Worldwide in 2000

[Karmadillo]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=571&ncid=751&e=1&u=/nm/20030911/hl_nm/health_smoking_dc

LONDON (Reuters) - Smoking killed nearly five million people in 2000, accounting for almost equal numbers in the developed and developing nations and painting a bleak picture for the future, scientists said on Friday.

Men accounted for three-quarters of all the deaths, a figure rising to 84 percent in the developing nations where 930 million of the world's 1.1 billion smokers are to be found, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts and Queensland University, Australia said in the Lancet medical journal.

The main causes of the tobacco-related deaths were heart and lung diseases, they noted.

The news comes as the major tobacco companies, increasingly under siege in the industrialized world, switch their sales efforts to emerging nations with their expanding populations and rising spending power.

more...

[baby_bear]

1. Which countries do or do not want to minimize early tobacco-related deaths

I think this is an important question. In China, international tobacco companies are trying to force their way into trade via WTO threats. Does China care more about protecting its tobacco trade, allowing in big international bucks, discouraging its populace from ensuring early death by becoming addicted to tobacco, domestic or foreign?

As a matter of fact, what does our government think about this? I know three people, one of which is my father, who died from smoking-induced (apparently) lung cancer in the past two years. Two were 80; one was 54. They are no longer a concern of the government, I suppose.

Am I totally cynical,and if so, am I totally wrong?

s_m

[Ellen Forradalom]

2. Jot this down in your wedding card for the happy couple

of Roy Blunt, Republican whip, and Abigail Perlman, tobacco lobbyist.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=323806

[Karmadillo]

3. Kick because this is obscene n/t

n/t

[veganwitch]

4. im so glad im quiting

except for maybe one or two when i go out (and im tryin to stop that) i dont have any during the week.

[Isere]

7. Good for you!

You will never, never regret the effort you put into quitting! Have you ever in fact met someone who said, "Oh, I'm so sorry I quit smoking!" Hell, no.
Once you get away from it you will wonder why you ever did it.

It's just a chemical and behavioral addiction that imprints itself on your brain so you think about it for ages after you quit. Then it stops and you are free!

Never give up, even if you have to try and try again. I've been there, but I quit in the days when smoking was still in restaurants and workplaces so it was hard to get away from. Today it is easier because smoking has become socially unpopular, at least in California, so there is an important incentive to quit.

Good luck, veganwitch!

[havocmom]

5. Are tobacco growers still getting subsidies?

And can we look at the books of the tobacco companies who sell this poison?

[cspiguy]

6. do the math - is the threat lower than we were led to believe?

5,000,000 0.454545%
------------- = ------------
1,100,000,000 100

or about half of one percent. At least for one year.

A better number would be the number of smokers who die of lung cancer. Anybody got that one? Don't get me wrong - my mom died of cancer (non-lung) and both parents smoked, leaving me appalled at the horrid thing. But these numbers are not scary to my calculator.

[twilight]

9. my mother died of lung cancer last year

She smoked for probably close to 40 years (heavily) and quit around 1990 or so. Oddly enough, the lung cancer (the type she had) was not caused by smoking! Go figure!

I used to smoke myself, but was never heavily addicted and I quit several years ago. Its a pricey habit and who really needs it no matter what the case may be?

:kick:

[TahitiNut]

8. Interesting.

:smoke:

"tobacco-related deaths"? Would that be cousins? second cousins? Inquiring minds want to know. Maybe I'll ask Uncle Philip or Aunt Lucky Strike? :silly:

[Kathy in Cambridge]

10. Kills More Women Than Breast Cancer

I have some friends in their 30s and 40s who still smoke, and while I'm all for their right to do what they want, it still worries me and I fear for their health.