HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Nov. 10, 2016 (HealthDay News) — There’s good news and bad news on smoking: Rates of smoking in the United States have tumbled to new lows, but health officials still estimate that four out of every 10 cancers is linked to the habit.
The latest report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that cigarette smoking dropped from 21 percent of U.S. adults (45 million) in 2005 to 15 percent (37 million) in 2015.
But in a Thursday media briefing, CDC officials also stressed that as many as 40 percent of cancers may be related to tobacco use.
“Although smoking rates are at an all-time low, tobacco causes cancer of at least 12 parts of the body, accounts for three in 10 cancer deaths, and will kill 6 million current smokers unless we implement programs that help them quit,” CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden said during the briefing.
The CDC notes that besides triggering lung cancer, smoking can also lead to tumors of the mouth and throat, voice box, esophagus, stomach, kidney, pancreas, liver, bladder, cervix, colon and rectum, as well as a type of blood cancer called acute myeloid leukemia.
In addition to cancer, smoking also contributes greatly to heart attacks, strokes and the majority of cases of COPD ( chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), Frieden said.
According to another report released Nov. 10, every year between 2009 and 2013, some 660,000 Americans were diagnosed with a tobacco-related cancer and about 343,000 died from such a cancer.
Cancer accounted for three in 10 deaths among cigarette smokers, the report noted.
However progress has been made, Frieden said, and since 1990, about 1.3 million tobacco-related cancer deaths among Americans have been avoided.
“The smoking rate is almost a third of what it was in 1965,” Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association, added in a press release. “This is remarkable progress, and as a nation, we have seen some of the health benefits. However, tobacco use still accounts for an unacceptably high number of cancer diagnoses and deaths each year, especially lung cancer, which accounts for more than 126,000 deaths each year,” he said.
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