Tobacco—The Growing Epidemic in China

Worldwide, 30 million adults died in 1990, 3 million from the effects of smoking tobacco,¹⁻³and the annual number of deaths from tobacco use is increasing. By about 2025, when the children of today reach middle age, some 10 million a year will die from the effects of tobacco.²The increase is predicted to be sharpest (from 1 million in 1995 to 7 million in 2025) in developing countries, of which China is the largest and consumes the most tobacco. In early middle age, about 5% of women and 75% of men in China are occasional or daily smokers.⁴Chinese men number 10% of the adults in the world, but smoke about 30% of the world's cigarettes.⁴Thus far, few Chinese women smoke, except in Manchuria, but among Chinese men, cigarette smoking has recently increased substantially (1 cigarette per day in 1952, See also p 1646.