Daily quit smoking message

Filed in archive Miscellany on October 5, 2005

A billion people will die from smoking related causes this century:

In the last century the death toll was about 100m, including 7m in Britain . . .

. . . Smoking currently kills about five million adults a year globally.

Each year, about 30m people take up smoking around the world, Professor Peto said.

He added: "If more than 20m of these continue to smoke and half are killed by their habit, then we are going to have more than 10m tobacco-related deaths a year.

"So in the present century, if we keep on smoking the way we are we will have about 1,000 million deaths," warned the Oxford University Professor.

That is equivalent to about a sixth of the world's current population.