Tobacco’s Toll in Greece

CAPITALIZING on the title of a popular Greek song, a reporter wrote with a touch of irony: “Yes, ‘Greece Never Dies,’ but the Greeks die.”

“Ten thousand people die every year from smoking, just in our own country,” reports an article in the Athenian newspaper Eleftheros Typos. Some believe the true death toll from tobacco may be twice as high. Greece is a tobacco-producing country, and smoking is an expanding habit among the Greeks in spite of the many reports recently written about the dangers resulting from smoking.