Government says smoking causes 26 diseases

WASHINGTON — Smoking, first linked to lung cancer in a groundbreaking report by the U.S. surgeon general 40 years ago, causes no fewer than 26 diseases, as well as severe complications in pregnancy, the government said Thursday.

A report by Surgeon General Richard Carmona blames smoking for nine diseases that previous reports had stopped short of saying it causes.

They are: cancers of the stomach, uterine cervix, pancreas and kidney; acute myeloid leukemia; pneumonia; abdominal aortic aneurysm; cataracts and periodontitis.

"It damages nearly every cell in your body," Carmona said in unveiling the report, 28th in a series extending back to a historic condemnation of smoking by then-Surgeon General Luther Terry in 1964.

Diseases said by previous surgeon general's reports to be caused by smoking include cancer of the bladder, esophagus, larynx, lung, mouth and throat. Smoking also has been linked to chronic lung disease, chronic heart and cardiovascular disease as well as reproductive problems.

Carmona said he was encouraged by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showing that smoking rates among adults continue to decline, though not fast enough to meet a federal goal of 12 percent by 2010.

The CDC said the decline in adult smoking has been slower among the poor and less educated.

Overall, 22.5 percent of adults smoked in 2002, the CDC said. The recorded peak was 42.6 percent in 1966.

But in the past two decades, smoking rate gaps between people above and below the poverty line, and between college graduates and high school dropouts, have increased. Nearly 33 percent of low-income people smoke, as do more than 42 percent of those who got General Educational Development degrees.

"We have to put some additional focus on making sure we're providing access to treatment services for disadvantaged populations," said Corrine Husten of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health.

Medicare doesn't pay for smoking cessation programs. Medicaid coverage varies; Oregon and New Jersey fund all services and 38 other states pay for some. Forty states have tobacco quit telephone lines that offer counseling, but funding for some has been cut in recent years.

Carmona said that although smoking causes an estimated 430,000 deaths among Americans every year, the number of Americans who smoke, about 45 million, has slipped below the approximately 46 million who have quit.