Tobacco to Kill 1 Billion!

Puff ... One Beeeeee-leee-on!

Tobacco expected to kill 1 billion this century Associated Press Updated: 7:07 p.m. ET July 10, 2006 Smoking accounts for 1 in 5 cancer deaths, new reference guides report WASHINGTON - If current trends hold, tobacco will kill a billion people this century, 10 times the toll it took in the 20th century, public health officials said Monday. Tobacco accounts for one in five cancer deaths, or 1.4 million deaths worldwide each year, according to two new reference guides that chart global tobacco use and cancer. Lung cancer remains the major cancer among the 10.9 million new cases of cancer diagnosed each year, according to the Tobacco Atlas... [ Full Story ]

OK. My local paper posted the headline as "Tobacco to kill 1 billion this century". Other outlets posted "Tobacco may kill 1 billion this century" [emphasis mine] as the title for the story. All I want to know is ... with that kind of potential, when will the Bush Administration declare war on Tobacco exporting countries? And before you cast your ballot, check out the map from the story:

Note: I had to update this post because the MSN story links and map image are no longer active. Also, the story I originally linked used "Cancer Atlas," not "Tobacco Atlas." So, I still kind of want to know how many people subscribe to something called the Cancer Atlas mistakenly thinking it is an astrology publication.