From: James Beard <??????????????????????>
Subject: Re: Pipes Digest #272 -- November 8, 2000 (fwd)

[Centers for Disease Control abstract from Pipes Digest #272
deleted. -S.]

Interesting.  Incidence of pipe smoking declines from 14.1 percent
of men in 1965 to 2.0 percent of men in 1991, but deaths
"attributable to pipe smoking" increased from 830 in 1965 to 1,095
in 1991.

Looks like increasing the number of pipe smokers seven-fold would
restore the status quo ante and result in a net _decrease_ of
approximately 265 deaths a year.  Would have to adjust this figure
for changes in total population, of course, but the odds still look
pretty good.

On the other hand, looking just at 1991, if there are 1,095 deaths
attributable to pipe smoking out of the roughly 2 million deaths a
year in the U.S.A., then roughly 1 out of 2,000 deaths is
attributable to pipe smoking.  If 2 percent of men are pipe smokers,
then about 1 percent of the total population are pipe smokers, so
this 1 percent of the population was--due to pipe smoking alone--
doing 0.05 percent of the dying.  

It would seem that pipe smoking has little if anything to do with
dying.  And this from the CDC itself!  

Cheers!

-----------------
??????????????????????

UNIX is not user-unfriendly.  It merely
   expects users to be computer-friendly.

[Thanks for noting this, Jim! -S.]


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