MIRPUR KHAS: Dr Sehrish Memon, coordinator for the Australian Multicultural Charity, has said that smoking causes more than 50 kinds of cancer diseases while cigarette smoke contains over 47,000 chemicals, including 43 known for cancer-causing (carcinogenic) compounds. She said that the death rate would be increased up to 10 million people by the year 2020 as a result of increased use of tobacco. She also said that smokeless tobacco causes oral cancer and might be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease besides increasing the risk for oral, lung, and esophageal cancers. The water pipe smoking increases the risk for oral and lip cancer and obstructive lung disease, she said. Dr Memon said that smoking causes a range of diseases never before suspected, including cataracts, acute myeloid leukemia and cervical, kidney, pancreatic and stomach cancers. In fact, smoking affects virtually every organ of the body, she added. She said that the smoking was responsible for many times more deaths than if one can combine road and air accidents, murders, suicides and HIV infections together. She said that smoking-related diseases were responsible for one in every 10 deaths in adults. She said that the health authorities have launched various campaigns to get as many as people make quitting smoking possible. She said that the cigarettes were the most commonly used and probably the most dangerous tobacco product was in the market. She said that smoking cigars and pipes and using smokeless tobacco products (chewing tobacco and snuff) were also risky. She said that smokeless tobacco might play a role in causing high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. She said that the passive smokers were more prone to hazards as they inhale all the smoke of the active smokers so family members of the smoker have more chances of falling prey to above mentioned diseases. Dr Memon believed that the chance that a non-tobacco user gets mouth cancer was 50 times lower and at the beginning, chewing tobacco determines the appearance of some injuries in the mouth. She said that the injuries precede oral cancer and the early detection of such injuries helps in the treatment of mouth cancer. In addition, people must also know that many of the mouth cancer symptoms are provoked by the tobacco. Smoking cigarettes and even chewing tobacco may accelerate appearance of mouth cancer symptoms, she said. She also demanded of the government to enforce laws to strictly ban smoking at the public places, offices, educational institutions, during traveling and also put a ban on advertisements of cigarettes in both print and electronic media.