Other Crap

The Straight Dope: Thank you for dying: Did 250 million people in the industrialized world die from smoking over 10 years?

• As Cecil points out, the number is absurd. The total number of deaths in the industrialized world, from all causes, was between 110 million and 125 million deaths in the ten year period 1995-2004. In other words, according to Christopher Buckley's statistic, smoking causes 200% of all deaths!
• The real number is about two million smoking-related deaths per year, about one in every six deaths in the industrialized world. Of course, all of those people would have died anyway, sooner or later, so from a statistical standpoint, smoking does not cause more people to die, but causes them to die SOONER. The meaningful statistic is the amount of life lost per smoker, and the best available answer seems to be 15 years.