robbster 26 Jun 2006 01:58 am
Is it really worth dying over?
Since the 1957 report suggested a link between smoking and lung cancer, the connection has been firmly established. Lung cancer now kills 20,000 people every year and health experts predict that life-time smokers have a 50% chance of dying of a smoking-related illness in middle-age.
It is also been established that tobacco smoking causes 25 different diseases including heart disease and strokes. By 2020, the World Health Organisation expects the worldwide death toll to reach 10 million, causing 17.7% of all deaths in developed countries.
There are believed to be 1.1 billion smokers in the world, 800 million of them in developing countries.
Source: BBC News [27 June 2006]
~robbbster
