Diseases linked to smoking claim millions of lives each year. Five percent of the deaths in the world are tobacco related. Tobacco’s yearly death toll in Europe and the United States is 20 percent of total deaths.

A heavily documented report on smoking released in January of this year by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., supplies the above information, and much more. “Tobacco kills 13 times as many Americans as hard drugs do,” it said, “and eight times as many as automobile accidents.” It takes more American lives every year than were lost in World War II. The Worldwatch report also observed: “Governments conduct paramilitary operations against marijuana or opium production or transport, but not tobacco, a far deadlier crop.”

Research published in the magazine Science stated: “Cigarette smoking is the major single known cause of cancer mortality in the United States, and tobacco’s contribution to all cancer deaths is estimated to be 30 percent.” Most of this 30 percent is from lung cancer.

Surveys show that many, especially teenagers, believe that smokeless tobacco is a safe alternative to cigarettes. Not so. Last year in the United States a 19-year-old man died from oral cancer.