About 2.5 million people worldwide, including 40,000 Canadians, die each year because of smoking. Smoking causes death from cardiovascular disease, lung diseases such as emphysema, bronchitis and pneumonia, stroke and several types of cancer. Not surprisingly, these are the leading causes of death in our society.
    Cancer rates have not increased significantly over the past half century, except for lung cancer. Smoking is responsible for 85 percent of lung cancer cases. It is the leading cause of cancers of the larynx and mouth and plays a role in causing cancers of the stomach, bladder, kidney, pancreas and cervix .
    Cancer cure rates have improved steadily from 20 percent to 50 percent, except for lung cancer. No effective treatment for advanced lung cancer exists. Yet some 5 million Canadians continue to smoke.
    Cigarettes are cancer factories. Cigarette tar contains toxic cancer-causing chemicals, and many other carcinogens enter cigarettes during production—pesticides and fertilizers in the field and chemicals during processing and manufacturing.
    A burning cigarette gives off almost 7,000 chemicals such as carbon monoxide, argon, nitrosamines, benzpyrene, radioactive polonium 210, cadmium, methane, benzene, formaldehyde, vinyl chloride, arsenic and hydrogen cyanide. More than 4,000 of these chemicals are toxic and 43 are known to cause cancer. The same carcinogens are also found in the tobacco used in pipes and cigars.
    A non-smoker sitting in the same room as a smoker cannot escape the toxic compounds released in tobacco smoke. In fact, second-hand smoke has significantly higher concentrations of the carcinogenic compounds found in mainstream smoke. "Involuntary" smoking leads to the deaths of an estimated 5,000 people in Canada each