The Effects of Tobacco

After many years of research it has been proven that cigarette smoking is the major cause of death globally. According to Surgeon General Smoking represents the most extensibly documented cause of disease, ever investigated in the history of biomedical research. The relation between smoking and human disease cannot be directly tested. It is morally and ethically incorrect. Therefore, other research has been developed to establish a very high degree of scientific probability.

The criteria used to research the health diseases of smoking are as follows: consistency of association, the information found is replicated under different circumstances, conditions, and settings. This helps eliminate confounding factors. Strength of association, this is reassured by relative risk ratios, incidence ratios, and mortality ratios, compared to those exposed to smoking and those not exposed. Specificity of association, this is taken by the degree of exposure to the suspected agent to predict the outcome. Temporal Relation of association, exposure to the causing factor of disease must proceed to the onset of disease. Coherence of association, Disease progression and effects on the settings must be explained clearly reflect the results.

Smoking has now been identified as the major cause of heart disease, stroke, and several different forms of cancer in organs other than the lungs, without including the large variety of other health problems. The majority of deaths caused by cigarette smoking are mainly caused by heart disease or lung cancer. On the other hand, there are also many known disease caused by cigarette smoking, such as: chronic bronchitis, stroke, circulatory diseases and other cancers developed in organs other than the lungs. In 1993, in Australia, cancers represented 26.9% of the deaths in that year; about one third of those deaths can be directly attributed to smoking caused cancers. Recent research has also showed that the danger of prolonged cigarette smoking is greater than it was thought originally. It has now been proven that if someone begins smoking as a teenager, and does not quit, by the time they are in their middle to old ages, half of their body will be killed by tobacco. This rate is proven likely to occur between 45 and 64 years of age. Smokers between those ages are three times more likely to die prematurely compared to lifelong non-smokers. In the group of smokers from 65 to 84, smokers are twice more likely to die prematurely compared to life long non-smokers of the same age.

According to surgeon general, tobacco represents the major cause of death world wide. Recent estimates have shown that tobacco was responsible for 1.7 million deaths in developed countries in 1985, and a projected 2.1 million deaths in 1995. This means that for the decade of the 90's 21 million deaths were caused in large developed countries. More than half of these deaths represent population between 35 and 69 years of age. In the smaller, less developed countries it is not certain what the annual mortality rate for tobacco is, but the tobacco smoking epidemic is just rising, even though high smoking rate points to a heavy burden of death and tobacco caused disease in the coming century. Sometime between the 2020's and 2025's the annual mortality rate caused by smoking is expected to be of 10 million a year.

It has been to the impression of the population that the effects of smoking only