How Many People Die From Smoking Each Year?

I just wrote about how many people die from being around second hand smoke each year, but how many people die from smoking each year?

I continued to research these stats, and the more I do, the more I am glad I made the switch to an alternative to cigarettes.

The global numbers for annual smoking deaths are incredible. If you want to know how many people die from smoking each year, it’s good to start with the total number – because people are people and they only exist on this one planet. Every year, roughly 5 million people die because of smoking-related diseases and conditions.

In the United States, the percentage of the population is larger. There are over 300 million people in the U.S. and roughly half a million die each year because of cigarettes. That doesn’t mean that half a million smokers die each year. In fact, about 50,000 of those deaths, every year, are people who died because of second hand smoke exposure.

What Are the Common Ways People Die From Smoking

There is no single greatest cause of death among smokers. In fact, there are three main categories of illness that tend to result from smoking. The first is the most obvious: cancer. Cancer kills 40% of the people who die from smoking each year. While 90% of lung cancer patients get lung cancer due to cigarette smoke, lung cancer is not the only cancer that smokers are likely to be diagnosed with. Other common cancers among smokers include cervical, kidney, bladder, stomach, esophageal, oral, and pancreatic cancer. Every year, 3000 people die of lung cancer because of exposure to second hand smoke.

The second largest category is that of stroke and heart disease. Heart disease encompasses any type of cardiac disease, including heart attack, angina, cardiomyopathy, and other heart problems. Of the deaths from smoking each year, 35% are from stroke or heart disease. Heart disease is the main cause of death for people who die from exposure to second hand smoke. About 46,000 people die every year of heart disease related to cigarette smoke inhalation even though they do not smoke themselves.

The remaining deaths, 25% of all cigarette-related deaths per year, are related to lung disease. Lung disease includes emphysema, bronchitis, asthma, and anything else that causes breathing problems and a lack of sufficient oxygen being absorbed into the blood stream.

How to Avoid Becoming a Statistic

The only real way to no become one of the many people who die from smoking each year is to not smoke cigarettes and steer clear of people who do. If you are a smoker and you want to quit, there are a lot of resources out there. Quitting smoking is not easy, in fact it can be incredibly hard work. If it wasn’t so hard, more people would have quit by now and hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been prevented, in the U.S. alone.

It is worth trying all of your options if you haven’t found a way to quit yet. Slowly reducing your cigarette use is one of the most effective ways, but it requires a lot of resolve and planning. Nicotine replacements like gum and patches are good, and some people swear by electronic cigarettes because they give you the same sensation of smoking.