> Well all these figures pale against the number of people who die from 
> smoking.  In the UK that's about 120,000
> a year (in a population about a fifth of that of the USA).


I'm suspicious of that stat.
But then, I'm always suspicious of ALL stats :-)

But, without doing the sensible thing and looking it up, lets see what it 
says.

1/5 USA is about 70,000,000 popn.
Death rate will be under about 1M pa
So 120,000 pa from smoking is about 12+% of all deaths.

Smoking is a decreasing habit.
Assume semi randomly that ABOUT 10% of the population smoke.
As smoking causes about the same number of deaths then we conclude that ALL 
smokers die of smoking.
Which may or may not be so.

The only way for this to not be so is if some of the above assumptions are 
wrong.Google would tell me, but i should be working.
If anyone cares they could check the figures above.

Aaagh. Can't stand it.
Quick (hopefully) Google
Hmm   25% !
So we conclude from the stat that about 50% of UK smokers die from smoking.
Could be true.

Back to work ...



        RM 

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