Smoking: Health Effects and Control

CIGARETTE smoking has been identified as the single most important source of preventable morbidity and premature mortality in each of the reports of the U.S. Surgeon General produced since 1964. The estimated annual excess mortality from cigarette smoking in the United States exceeds 350,000, more than the total number of American lives lost in World War I, Korea, and Vietnam combined and almost as many as were lost during World War II.1 It is estimated that among the 565,000 annual deaths from coronary heart disease, 30 per cent, or 170,000 deaths, are attributable to smoking.2 Furthermore, 30 per cent of . . .