Smoking is the leading preventable cause of premature death in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each day nearly 3,000 young people across the country will begin smoking regularly. An estimated 47 million adult Americans smoke cigarettes, even though this behavior will result in early death or disability for half of all regular users. Each year, tobacco use is responsible for more than 440,000, or one in every five, deaths.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stated that “tobacco products kill more people in this country every year than AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, homicides, illegal drugs, suicides, and fires combined.” Paralleling this enormous health burden is an equally significant economic burden – more than $50 billion in medical expenditures and another $50 billion in indirect costs resulting from tobacco use each year. There are 1.3 billion smokers worldwide and an estimated five million die each year from tobacco-related illnesses, according to the World Health Organization. By 2025, the number of deaths attributed to cigarettes is expected to reach ten million per year.