Smoking Does Not Cause Lung Cancer (According to WHO/CDC Data)*Would you believe that the real number is < 10% (see Appendix A)? Yes, a US white male (USWM) cigarette smoker has an 8% lifetime chance of dying from lung cancer but the USWM nonsmoker also has a 1% chance of dying from lung cancer (see Appendix A). In fact, the data used is biased in the way that it was collected and the actual risk for a smoker is probably less.
When we look at the data over a longer period, such as 50 years as we did here, the lifetime relative risk is only 8 (see Appendix A). That means that even using the biased data that is out there, a USWM smoker has only an 8x more risk of dying from lung cancer than a nonsmoker. It surprised me too because I had always heard numbers like 20-40 times more risk. Statistics that are understandable and make sense to the general public, what a concept!
According to those WHO/CDC stats non-smokers have a 1% chance of contracting lung cancer. If we hypothesize that all 300 million Americans were non-smokers that would mean that 3 million of them would get lung cancer. That is twice as many as you thought would get it using 3.5% as the denominator.
There are NOT 3 million cases of lung cancer in non smokers per year. The hospitals would be filled to overflowing with them if there were. Not even the most rabid anti-smoker claims this number. The most common cancer is prostate cancer in men. Not even close to the number of lung cancer cases in SMOKERS. Asian men smoke in much more % than white men, yet somehow have less lung cancer. But they do suffer from much more stomach cancer. From my recollection, the 8X risk seems right for smokers getting lung cancer. And for coal miners who smoke it was something like 50 times the risk.