Diseases and Death
![Diseases and Death](./diseases-and-death_html_files/fact-sheets-mortality-650x380-1-small.jpg)
Smoking leads to disease and disability and harms nearly every organ of the body.1
- More than 16 million Americans are living with a disease caused by smoking.
- For every person who dies because of smoking, at least 30 people live with a serious smoking-related illness.
- Smoking causes cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
- Smoking also increases risk for tuberculosis, certain eye diseases, and problems of the immune system, including rheumatoid arthritis.
- Smoking is a known cause of erectile dysfunction in males.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death.
- Worldwide, tobacco use causes more than 7 million deaths per year.2 If the pattern of smoking all over the globe doesn’t change, more than 8 million people a year will die from diseases related to tobacco use by 2030.3
- Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day.1
- On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers.4
- If smoking continues at the current rate among U.S. youth, 5.6 million of today’s Americans younger than 18 years of age are expected to die prematurely from a smoking-related illness. This represents about one in every 13 Americans aged 17 years or younger who are alive today.1
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health, 2014 [accessed 2018 Feb 22].
- World Health Organization. WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 2017. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2017 [accessed 2019 Jan 31].
- World Health Organization. WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 2011. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2011 [accessed 2018 Feb 22].
- Jha P, Ramasundarahettige C, Landsman V, et al. 21st Century Hazards of Smoking and Benefits of Cessation in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine 2013;368:341–50 [accessed 2018 Feb 22].