India in the grip of a smoking epidemic: study
Likely to cause nearly a million deaths a year by 2010; more than half of these among poor and illiterate people India is in the grip of a smoking epidemic likely to cause nearly a million deaths a year by 2010, according to a study released on Thursday. One in five of all male deaths and one in 20 of all female deaths between the ages of 30 and 69 will be caused by smoking, said the study. It was conducted by a team of doctors and scientists from India, Canada and Britain and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.