SMOKING STATISTICS

Smoking and Lung Cancer Correlations in the United States

• Lung cancer is heavily associated with smoking. In fact, it is estimated that 90% of cases of lung cancer in men and 80% of cases of lung cancer in women is caused by smoking.
• The elevated risk of developing lung cancer when comparing smokers to non-smokers is striking. Men who smoke have a 23 times increased risk of developing lung cancer when compared to men who don't smoke. Similarly, women who smoke have a 13 times increased risk of developing lung cancer when compared to women who don't smoke.
• This risk associated with developing lung cancer increases in proportion to both the number of cigarettes smoked per day, and also the number of years a person has been smoking. For this reason physicians use a the pack-year unit when calculating risk, where one pack year smoking history is equal to smoking one pack per day for one year.
• According to the CDC, in 2005 196,687 people in the United States were diagnosed with lung cancer. Also in that year 159,217 people died from lung cancer.
• More deaths from lung cancer occur in the United States than from any other cancer among both men and women.
• According to the CDC, in 2005 the deaths from lung cancer were greater than the deaths from breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer combined.
• Tobacco is the number of cause of premature death and disease in the United States when looking at all of the diseases and deaths attributable to tobacco, of which death to lung cancer is a major factor. Quitting smoking is an important lifestyle change that many people can make which will improve the quality of their life and the number of years they live on average.
• Every day 3,000 children under the age of 18 start smoking in the United States.
• Smoking one pack of cigarettes a day will decrease your life span on average by seven years when compared to non-smokers.