CDC's New Vital Signs Focused on Smoking-Related Cancers
The report recommends that states and communities support cancer prevention, education, screening, quality of care, support for cancer survivors, and good health for all, as well as fund comprehensive tobacco prevention and control programs at CDC-recommended levels.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focused its Vital Signs publication this month on cancers linked to tobacco use. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of cancer and cancer deaths, causing at least 12 types of cancer throughout the body, the report reminds, as it makes these and other key points:
- Each year, 660,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with cancers related to tobacco use and 343,000 people die of them.
- About 1.3 million cases of tobacco-related cancer have been avoided since 1990, but not all population groups have benefited equally.
- People are still dying from tobacco-related cancers, and some groups of people have a higher burden of tobacco-related cancers than others.
- States, territories, and tribes can help by supporting comprehensive cancer control programs, protecting non-smokers from secondhand tobacco smoke in indoor public areas and improving access to cessation programs for those who want to quit smoking.
The report recommends that states and communities support cancer prevention, education, screening, quality of care, support for cancer survivors, and good health for all, as well as fund comprehensive tobacco prevention and control programs at CDC-recommended levels.
Tobacco use can cause lung cancer and cancers of the mouth and throat, voice box, esophagus, stomach, kidney, pancreas, liver, bladder, cervix, colon, and rectum, and a type of leukemia.