For twenty years, researchers have been listening to smokers describe what they believe tobacco does to their bodies — and the answers reveal something quietly troubling about the limits of public health ambition. A sweeping analysis of more than 240,000 smokers across 46 countries finds that while the lung cancer message has taken hold, awareness of cardiovascular and secondhand smoke dangers remains dangerously incomplete, with knowledge advancing at barely a fraction of a percentage point per year. The human cost of this gap is not abstract: cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of pr
Two decades of tobacco surveys show stalled awareness of smoking's cardiovascular risks
Tobacco smoking causes millions of deaths annually worldwide, with cardiovascular disease being a major cause of preventable premature deaths globally.