Laura Jean Bierut, MD of Washington University of Medicine discusses 400,000 vs 60,000 fatalities per year lung cancer vs opioid crisis. Currently, there is an opioid epidemic with over 60,000 people dying every year because of overdoses. This is over the news and there are questions like, What to do about it? However, compared to the tobacco epidemic, this is much smaller. Tobacco epidemic caused over 400,000 people dying every year, primarily from cigarette smoking.
In this light, although the opioid crisis is alarming, its also very important to keep in mind the tobacco epidemic that is still happening until today.
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