Number of smokers dips again, but addiction is now linked to 40 percent of all cancers

Smoking has now been linked to 40 percent of all cancers despite the number of smokers continuing to decline dramatically.

Malignancies, in addition to lung cancer, include throat, stomach, pancreas and liver, according to a recent story by Laurie McKinley in The Washington Post.

Tom Frieden

McKinley quotes Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as saying that although smoking rates are “at all-time lows…nearly half (the current 36 million smokers) could die prematurely from tobacco-related illnesses, including 6 million from cancer.”

The article also quotes the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report to the effect that the number of smoking adults declined 1.7 percent last year — down to 15.1 percent.

In 2005, there were 45.1 million adult American smokers.

Ernest Hawk, vice president for cancer prevention at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, also was quoted by McKinley: “Smoking is more than just a habit. It’s an addiction, and it’s very hard to get off any addictive substance.”

I cerainly know all about that — I smoked more cigarettes than I care to remember. 

For more than 30 years.

When I finally quit, I dug a hole in my back yard, inserted an unfinished pack of Pall Malls, and declared to the skies, “I’m burying these cigarettes so I can live.”

The American Lung Association, by the way, has called on Congress “to fully fund smoking-cessation efforts in states,” according to the Post story.

“Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer,” a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at caregivers, details a vast variety of cancer causes, proving that cancer is hardly monolithic.