New Evidence That Cigarette Smoking Remains the Most Important Health Hazard

Everyone knows cigarette smoking is bad for you. Most people in the United States assume that smoking is on its way out. But the grim reality is that smoking still exerts an enormous toll on the health of Americans, as documented in two articles in this issue of the Journal.1,2 Both articles review mortality trends over time for men and women according to smoking status, and both confirm that smoking remains a huge threat to the public's health. Jha et al. review data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey, which involved 113,752 women and 88,496 men 25 . . .