Wow, this story is a big wow.

I had many an argument back in the day with Smoker’s Club weasels: that the death toll from smoking (440,000 a year in the U.S.) has been exaggerated by anti-smoking fanatics and the government. Well, according to a new study released this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, that death toll figure is actually too low.

This new report includes an estimated another 50,000 to 60,000 deaths a year caused by smoking (over half a million a year when you add it to the existing numbers). Over the past 20 years, research has shown that smoking is a huge risk factor for a variety of diseases beyond lung cancer and COPD — this research in particular points to diabetes and especially arthritis as diseases that appear to have ties to cigarette smoking.

One of the reasons cigarette smoking seems to cause so many diseases is that it restricts blood flow to various organs in the body. According to this report, diseases now linked to smoking include kidney disease and intestinal diseases, and heart and lung diseases not previously associated with smoking — again, due to the lack of blood flow caused by smoking.

The diseases that had previously been established by the surgeon general as caused by smoking were cancers of the esophagus, stomach, colon, liver, pancreas, larynx, lung, bladder, kidney, cervix, lip and oral cavity; acute myeloid leukemia; diabetes; heart disease; stroke; atherosclerosis; aorticaneurysm; other artery diseases; chronic lung disease; pneumonia;influenza; and tuberculosis.

(This list forgot to mention arthritis, which is a sore spot for me watching what my Mom is going through.)