By 2030, the World Health Organization (WHO) forecasts that 10 million people a year will die of smoking-related illness, making it the single biggest cause of death worldwide, with the largest increase to be among women. WHO forecasts the 21st centurys death rate from smoking to be ten times the 20th centurys rate ("Washingtonian" magazine, December 2007). The tobacco industry is known to be one of the largest global enterprises in the world. The six biggest tobacco companies made a combined profit of $35.1 billion (Jha et al., 2014) in 2010. Social
Famous smokers of the past used cigarettes or pipes as part of their image, such as Jean-Paul Sartres Gauloises-brand cigarettes; Albert Einsteins, Douglas MacArthurs, Bertrand Russells, and Bing Crosbys pipes; or the news broadcaster Edward R. Murrows cigarette. Writers in particular seem to be known for smoking, for example, Cornell Professor Richard Kleins book Cigarettes are Sublime for the analysis, by this professor of French literature, of the role smoking plays in 19th and 20th century letters. The popular author Kurt Vonnegut addressed his addiction to cigarettes within his novels. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was well known for smoking a pipe in public as was Winston Churchill for his cigars. Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, smoked a pipe, cigarettes, and cigars. The DC Vertigo comic book character John Constantine, created by Alan Moore, is synonymous with smoking, so much so that the first storyline by Preacher creator Garth Ennis centered around John Constantine contracting lung cancer.
Beginning in December 1952, the magazine Readers Digest published "Cancer by the Carton", a series of articles that linked smoking with lung cancer.In 1954, the British Doctors Study, a prospective study of some 40 thousand doctors for about 2.5 years, confirmed the suggestion, based on which the government issued advice that smoking and lung cancer rates were related. In January 1964, the United States Surgeon Generals Report on Smoking and Health likewise began suggesting the relationship between smoking and cancer.As scientific evidence mounted in the 1980s, tobacco companies claimed contributory negligence as the adverse health effects were previously unknown or lacked substantial credibility. Health authorities sided with these claims up until 1998, from which they reversed their position. The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, originally between the four largest US tobacco companies and the Attorneys General of 46 states, restricted certain types of tobacco advertisement and required payments for health compensation; which later amounted to the largest civil settlement in United States history.Social campaigns have been instituted in many places to discourage smoking, such as Canadas National Non-Smoking Week. From 1965 to 2006, rates of smoking in the United States declined from 42% to 20.8%. The majority of those who quit were professional, affluent men. Although the per-capita number of smokers decreased, the average number of cigarettes consumed per person per day increased from 22 in 1954 to 30 in 1978. This paradoxical event suggests that those who quit smoked less, while those who continued to smoke moved to smoke more light cigarettes.