London - More than half a million people in Europe die from smoking-related diseases every year, a leading lung specialist said yesterday.
Professor Charis Roussos, the chairman of the European Respiratory Society, said cigarettes were more lethal than handguns, hard drugs, suicide, AIDS and automobile accidents combined. "In the European Union 90 per cent of lung cancers in men are caused by smoking tobacco and more than 500,000 deaths are related to tobacco use each year," he said in the European Respiratory Journal.