Smoking and Cancer: Why There's More at Risk than Your Lungs

By now most people know cigarettes are bad for your health. Some shocking new statistics reveal just how deadly tobacco use really is.  

The connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer has been widely reported for decades. As it turns out, that's just the tip of the iceberg.  

Disturbing new data shows smoking or chewing tobacco also leads to 11 other types of cancer: mouth and throat, voice box, esophagus, stomach, kidney, pancreas, liver, bladder, cervix, colon and rectum, and a type of leukemia.

Tobacco use is so harmful that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us it leads to 40 percent, nearly half, of all cancer diagnoses and a third of all cancer deaths, making it the number one preventable cause of cancer and cancer deaths.

Despite these ominous statistics, the good news is tobacco use in America is at an all-time low. Roughly 36 million Americans, about 15 percent of the total population, smoke. That's the lowest number of smokers ever recorded since the CDC began keeping track in 1965.  

Smoking rates remain the highest among men, people living below the poverty line and those without a high school diploma.