[单项选择]The single most shattering statistic about life in America in the late 1990s was that tobacco killed more people than the combined total of those who died from AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, murder, suicide, illegal drugs and fire. The deaths of more than 400, 000 Americans each year, 160, 000 of them from lung cancer, make a strong case for the prohibition of tobacco, and particularly of cigarettes. The case, backed by solid evidence, has been made in every public arena since the early 1950s, when the first convincing link between smoking and cancer was established in clinical and epidemiological studies—yet 50 million Americans still go on smoking. tobacco-related illness. It is a remarkable story, clearly told, astonishingly well documented and with a transparent moral motif.
Most smokers in America eventually manage to quit, and local laws banning smoking in public have become common, but the industry prospers. The tobacco companies have survived virtually everything their opp