Oral Effects of Tobacco Abuse

Introduction

Note: This information was first published in the Journal of the American Dental Institute for Continuing Education, 1992; 43:3-17. Authors: Drs. Jerry Bouquot & Kathy Schroeder, Department of Oral Pathology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia.  It is updated periodically.

Tobacco has been variously hailed as a gift from the gods, a miraculous cure-all for life's physical ills, a solace to the lonely soldier or sailor, a filthy habit, a corrupting addiction, and the greatest disease-producing product known to man. This diversity of opinion has continued unchanged for centuries and has appeared until very recently to be little affected by research results from more than 900,000 papers thus far published on the topic. It is common knowledge that cigarette smoking is the single major cause of cancer and cardiovascular disease in the United States, contributing to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year, yet one-fourth to one-third of American adults continue to smoke.

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