The social costs of smoking in Australia.

For many years, the major dispute between the tobacco industry and the public health community was over the issue of whether smoking caused morbidity and premature mortality, or whether there was simply a statistical association without a causal connection. In the face of the type of evidence comprehensively surveyed in several recent international and Australian meta-analyses, and particularly in the light of admissions about causality contained in now public internal tobacco industry documents, the industry has been forced to concede defeat on this front.