A Startling Headline

From the Pioneer Press a few days ago:


The headline is a bit misleading, or at least, it's easy to misunderstand. I first thought it meant that tobacco would kill the young men soon. I think I missed that hedging word "may" on first glance.

But even so, the story clearly says that one in three young Chinese men will die at some point of tobacco-caused illness. Two-thirds of young Chinese men currently smoke, so that's half of them dying from it.

I imagine this is similar to what the stats in the U.S. would have been during the mid-20th-century if doctors had been honestly analyzing the effects of tobacco then.