7/30/2019 Claims That Smoking Kills More People Annually Than Other Dangerous Activities

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Claims that smoking kills more people annually thanother dangerous activities combinedCongress recently gave the Food and Drug Administration the ability to regulate tobacco, and

George Will is not impressed.

He said the new law is flawed because it restricts advertising - new rules could "merit a

constitutional challenge" - because it is supported by the tobacco industry - "a crystalline example

of Washington business as usual" - and because it it perpetuates what Will calls a government

"addiction to tobacco tax revenue."

"The February expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program is supposed to be

financed by increased tobacco taxes, so this health care depends on an ample and renewable

supply of smokers," he wrote in a June 18, 2009, Washington Post column. Governments will

never outlaw smoking because "governments cannot loot tobacco companies that do not flourish."

Will thinks the new law is no good, but he's certainly no fan of smoking either, and he made this

claim to demonstrate his aversion to the habit:

"Three decades ago, public outrage killed an automobile model (Ford's Pinto) whose design defects

allegedly caused 59 deaths," he wrote. "Yet every year tobacco kills more Americans than did

World War II -- more than AIDS, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, vehicular accidents, homicide and

suicide combined."

More than AIDS? More than car accidents? We were skeptical, so we decided to take a look

ourselves.

It seems that Will plucked part of his claim from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, a leading

advocate for the new law. According to the organization, about 400,000 people die from their ownsmoking each year, and about 50,000 die from second hand smoke annually. And according to the

group's Web site, "smoking kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs,

murders, and suicides combined."

Even though that fact is repeated by many anti-smoking campaigns, and the American Cancer

Society, we decided to crunch the numbers ourselves. According to the Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention, in 2006, when their database was last updated, 22,073 people died of alcohol,

12,113 died of AIDS, 43,664 died of car accidents, 38,396 died of drug use - legal and illegal -

18,573 died of murder, and 33,300 died of suicide.

That brings us to a total of 168,119 deaths, far less than the 450,000 that die from smoking

annually.

As for the part about World War II, Will came up with this comparison himself. About 292,000

soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines were killed in battle during World War II, according to a U.S.

Census Bureau April 29, 2004 report in commemoration of the new World War II memorial in

Washington, D.C. An additional 114,000 members of U.S. forces died of other causes during the

war, bringing the total to 406,000 people.

Will's claim - that smoking kills more people annually than in World War II or from other

dangerous diseases and habits - holds up with the CDC and the Census Bureau. As a result, we

give Will a True