On 14 March, sandwiched between the UK national No Smoking Day and the international World No Tobacco Day, a lunch hour lecture explored what might be the most successful product ever: cigarettes.

Cigarette courtesy of
Fried Dough on Flickr

Deputy director of Cancer Research UK and UCL Cancer Trials Centre Professor Allan Hackshaw reminded us all just why cigarettes are so terrible.

There were a billion smokers in 2010. That’s a big number, and it’s going up, despite all that’s known about the health risks that smoking brings.

That might seem strange, until you look at how much each side of the table spends. In 2011, the US spent $457 million to reduce tobacco-related harm.

However, the tobacco industry spent more than $8 billion promoting, marketing and advertising their products, which makes it a little easier to understand why a product that kills half its consumers is still finding new ones.

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