Smoking and Coronary Heart Disease in Women

The average lifespan of Americans is currently at a record high, having increased 3.8 years overall from 1970 to 1983.¹The life expectancy of women, however, is still markedly higher than that of men. At 1983 US death rates, women can expect to live 78.3 years, while the corresponding figure for men is 71 years. The favorable survival experience of women has been due, in part, to their lower rates of lung cancer, the chief cause of cancer deaths, and of coronary heart disease (CHD), the leading cause of all US deaths. In contrast to this encouraging news is the fact that, at present, cigarette smoking is known to be responsible for 85% to 90% of the approximately 120,000 annual lung cancer deaths expected this year in the United States (plus several tens of thousands of other cancer deaths),²as well as perhaps 20% or more of all