About Smoking and Tobacco Use
Cited in 2 Likelier entries (2 risks, 0 decisions).
Used in 2 entries
For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.
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- Statistic
Smoking and secondhand smoke exposure cause >480,000 US deaths per year (~1 in 5 US deaths); >16 million Americans live with a smoking-caused disease
“"Smoking and secondhand smoke exposure cause more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States. This is nearly one in five deaths. More than 16 million Americans live with a disease caused by smoking. [...] Secondhand smoke exposure contributes to over 40,000 deaths among nonsmoking adults and 400 deaths in infants each year."”
Calculation notes
CDC’s ~480,000 annual US smoking-attributable deaths figure is the standard domestic headline. Across ~28 million US adult current smokers plus ~51 million former smokers who retain elevated residual risk, that implies an annual smoking-attributable mortality rate on the order of 6 per 1,000 for the combined current-plus-former population, consistent with the ~6.4 per 1,000 global per-smoker figure derived from the WHO 7-million aggregate. Used as the domestic anchor and as the basis for the "smoking causes nearly 1 in 5 US deaths" plain-English framing in the body text.
Independence note: CDC smoking-attributable mortality estimates use the SAMMEC (Smoking- Attributable Mortality, Morbidity, and Economic Costs) model, which draws on Cancer Prevention Study II hazard ratios — overlapping but not identical to the cohorts used by Jha and Doll. Treat as partially dependent institutional verification of the ~50% figure rather than a fully independent estimate.
Source date: 2024-05-15 · Accessed: 2026-04-11
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SHS contributes to >41,000 non-smoker adult deaths and ~400 infant deaths per year in the US; >480,000 total smoking-related deaths including SHS
“"Smoking and secondhand smoke exposure cause more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States. This is nearly one in five deaths. [...] Secondhand smoke exposure contributes to over 40,000 deaths among nonsmoking adults and 400 deaths in infants each year."”
Calculation notes
41,000 non-smoker adult deaths per year is the primary domestic headline figure and the numerator for the normalized calculation. US non-smoking adult population denominator: ~225 million (87% of ~260M US adults). Annual attributable rate: 41,000 / 225M = 1.82e-4. Compounded over 60 adult years: 1 − (1 − 1.82e-4)^60 ≈ 0.011. The CDC does not directly report the lung cancer / heart disease breakdown on this page; the ~7,300 lung cancer and ~33,950 heart disease sub-totals appear in the CDC's dedicated SHS resource pages and the 2006 Surgeon General Report on involuntary tobacco smoke exposure.
Independence note: CDC SAMMEC (Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Morbidity, and Economic Costs) model draws on Cancer Prevention Study II hazard ratios and NHANES SHS exposure data — methodologically overlapping with the 2006 Surgeon General Report, which uses the same underlying cohort hazard ratios. Treat as institutional confirmation of the same underlying estimate rather than a fully independent line of evidence.
Source date: 2024-05-15 · Accessed: 2026-04-11
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