NEWS FOR smokers gets worse and worse. According to earlier studies, about one-fourth the number of regular smokers were expected to die of tobacco-related diseases. Latest estimates put the figure at one-third.

Richard Peto of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in UK, along with the World Health Organisation and the American Cancer Society, has found that there is a growing incidence of deaths from tobacco in the West and the former Soviet Union. One-fifth of all the people in this region will be killed by tobacco-smoking. For every smoker stricken by lung cancer, three others will die from heart disease, other cancers and chest ailments.