2004-6-15
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
Tobacco is even more dangerous than doctors have known. A new
report says smoking causes disease in almost every organ in the
body. The report is from the top government doctor in the United
States, Surgeon General Richard Carmona.
The Office of the Surgeon General released its first report about
smoking and health forty years ago. In nineteen-sixty-four, the
surgeon general announced research establishing that smoking caused
several diseases. These included cancer of the lungs and voice box.
Later studies found that smoking causes other kinds of cancer and
disease. Research also showed that cigarettes harm the babies of
women who smoke.
The newest report expands the list of conditions caused by
smoking. New ones added include leukemia, cataracts and pneumonia.
Smoking is now also known to cause cancers of the cervix, kidneys,
pancreas and stomach.
Health officials say smoking is the leading preventable cause of
death and disease. An estimated four-hundred-forty-thousand
Americans per year die of smoking-related diseases. The report says
more than twelve-million have died since the first report forty
years ago. Research has shown that the poorest and least educated
are the ones most likely to smoke.
The new report says that on average, smokers die thirteen to
fourteen years before non-smokers. Smoking also harms others who
have to breathe around a smoker, such as children at home. And it
causes economic harm, including high medical costs and lost
productivity.
Some gains have been made. In nineteen-sixty-five, about
forty-two percent of adults in the United States smoked. Now the
estimate is about twenty-two percent. The government wants to reduce
that to twelve percent by two-thousand-ten. But the report says
rates of reduction among adults and young people have slowed.
Public health groups say federal and state officials need to take
stronger action. Congress is considering legislation to give the
Food and Drug Administration control over cigarettes.
Some are called "light" or "low tar." But Doctor Carmona says
these are no healthier. He says there is no safe cigarette. The only
good news for smokers in the surgeon general's report is that their
health begins to improve immediately after they stop.
This VOA Special English Health Report was written by Cynthia
Kirk.