Fig. 1

Schematic diagram of smoking epidemic, after reference 5. Males (in blue) take up smoking (solid line) at a steady pace until smoking-attributable mortality surges (dashed line) and the proportion smoking starts to decline. Females (in red) take up smoking later than males and reach a lower maximum proportion smoking. Smoking-attributable mortality in females is the last to increase to significant proportions. An essential feature of the model is the large time gap between the act of smoking and dying from it