{Big Tobacco's} Human Toll

The numbers are startling:

• Tobacco kills one person every six seconds.
• It kills up to half the people who use it, an average of 15 years prematurely.
• It causes one in ten deaths among adults worldwide.
• It kills more than five million people a year.
• If current trends continue, tobacco will become the world’s leading cause of death by 2030, with 80 percent of deaths occurring in the world’s poorest countries.

And these aren’t just numbers. We all have a family member, a friend or a colleague who has been affected.  

That’s why when a tobacco industry executive dismissed such figures as “computer-generated numbers” before Congress, Corporate Accountability International launched the Human Toll of Tobacco project. Photos of people who are sick or have died from tobacco-related illnesses are displayed on a 200-foot-long banner.

The Human Toll of Tobacco banner has toured the globe, confronting executives at corporate annual meetings, and policymakers at the U.S. Capitol, raising awareness at conferences from Beijing to Chicago.

By putting a human face on this global epidemic, we are making the corporate role in tobacco-related disease and death very personal for decisionmakers.

The following are personal stories from our members. If you have a story to share, please email us at stories@stopcorporateabuse.org.