Male and female smokers lose an average of 13.2 and 14.5 years of life, respectively.
According to the results of a 50 year study of 34,439 male British doctors, at least half of all life-long smokers die earlier as a result of smoking.
Smokers are three times as likely to die before the age of 60 or 70 as non-smokers.
In the United States alone, cigarette smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke results in at least 443,000 premature deaths annually.
"In the United States alone, tobacco kills the equivalent of three jumbo jets full of people crashing every day, with no survivors, 365 days of the year." -ABC's Peter Jennings. On a worldwide basis, it's 1 jumbo jet per hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. -WHO