Health issues in the Arab American community. Commentary on tobacco: the world's leading cause of cancer.

Cancer incidence is on the rise in many regions of the world, including the Middle East, where incidence rates for both men and women are increasing. Like many regions of the world, increased tobacco use, combined with other factors, is driving cancer incidence in the Middle East. Tobacco, the only consumer product proven to kill more than half of its regular users, will be responsible for 4.9 million deaths worldwide this year alone. That burden is fairly evenly shared by industrialized and developing nations today but, if current trends continue, the cancer burden in the developing world will more than triple in the next 25 years, resulting in a global total of 10 million deaths worldwide each year. Seven million of these deaths will occur in the developing world, in nations least prepared to deal with the financial, social, and political consequences of this global public health tragedy. In the Arab world, lung cancer is already occurring with increasing frequency, particularly among men.