"Of all the Greeks alive, 3.8 million smoke and 19,000 of them will die every year prematurely." Source: http://www.who.int/fctc/reporting/party_reports/greece_annex1_the_greek_tobacco_epidemic_2011.pdf Why not say 0.5% will die prematurely? Also, if they said 95.5% will not die prematurely it would be the same thing. 19000 is exactly 0.5 percent of 3.8 million. I'm not saying smoking is not bad, but see how the presentation of the statistics affects your perception. This isn't only about smoking. It's also a marketing trick.
Well they are saying "per year". So yes 3.8 million smoke and each year 19,000 will die prematurely---which possibily means of some disease. Or it could be they just look at all smokers that die---and decide they all died prematurely even if they were 100 years old. But---at least they won't die of alzheimers...because you will never hear it from the reporting---but nicotine protects the brain.
I'm not arguing about the content, though you might be right, I'm just saying that they're trying to make it sound worse than it is. If they said "0.5% of those smokers" will die prematurely, people wouldn't worry too much about it.
