OK, smoke fans, the facts are out once again. According to the new and pretty inarguable Cancer Atlas and the updated Tobacco Atlas, which were published by The American Cancer Society, if “Smoky, The Scare” gets his way, tobacco use is projected to kill a billion people in this century. (By the way, wouldn’t it be more reassuring if the word Prevention was in the Society’s name?)
Now, thats what we call recreational population control. The figure amounts to ten times as many folks as smoking sent choking to the grave in the 20th century.
And ready for this? Tobacco use causes one in five cancer deaths, or a total of 1.4 million graveward bound souls a year.
Now, heres the good and much underappreciated news: Dr. Judity Mackay, a senior policy adviser of the World Health Organization, tells us, “We know with cancer, if we take action now, we can save 2 million lives a year by 2020 and 6.5 million by 2040.”
So heres our bit to stop cancer in its tracks. And were not going to pull any punches, because, if you still smoke, you obviously havent listened to anybody yet, and we care about you too much not to give you our...