Despite half a century of public health efforts, smoking remains the single largest cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, killing 480,000 people a year and inflicting chronic disease on 16 million. Since the early part of the 20th century, tobacco companies' success in aggressively marketing their products to women has resulted in steady increases in smoking-related disease risk for women. Today, women smokers have caught up with their male counterparts and are just as likely to die from lung cancer, heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as are men who smoke. Women's risk for developing smoking-related heart disease or dying from COPD now exceeds men's risk.
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