During the past 20 years, as smoking rates have fallen in high-incomecountries, the tobacco industry has found new and bigger marketsin the developing world. One third of current smokers live inChina — more than in the United States and all Europeancountries combined. The World Health Organization (WHO) predictsthat 70% of the deaths from smoking-related illnesses will occurin low- and middle-income countries by 2020. Smoking is likelyto have a particularly devastating effect on China, where theannual death toll from smoking-related diseases already exceeds1 million — 2.5 times that in the United States . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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Dr. Wright is a fellow in hematology–oncology at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and Dr. Katz is a fellow in infectious disease at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.
An interview with Dr. Steven Schroeder, director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California, San Francisco, can be heard at www.nejm.org.
This article has been cited by other articles:
Gu, D., Kelly, T. N., Wu, X., Chen, J., Samet, J. M., Huang, J.-f., Zhu, M., Chen, J.-c., Chen, C.-S., Duan, X., Klag, M. J., He, J.
(2009). Mortality Attributable to Smoking in China. NEJM
360: 150-159
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