Smoking is linked to at least twenty cancers, not just lung cancer. The Foundation against Cancer reports this on the occasion of World No Tobacco Day on 31 May. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tobacco is the cause of a quarter of deaths from the disease worldwide.
It has been known for decades that smoking is bad for you. For example, 80 percent of lung cancer is caused by tobacco use. And secondhand smoke also increases the risk of lung cancer, a disease in which less than 30 percent eventually cures.
But it is by no means only cancer in which the cigarette plays a role. The Cancer Foundation warns that tobacco is linked to a total of 20 forms of the disease. For example, oral cancer is two to four times more common in people who smoke than people who don’t.
Smokers are also twice as likely to develop pancreatic cancer.
“Those people risk losing eight years of their lives and living in poor health, with a reduced quality of life, for many years,” explains Veronique Le Ray, medical director and spokesperson for the Foundation Against Cancer.