"Since the author used that statistic and didn't immediately launch into a justification of how it's not completely crazy, I can't trust this article enough to

"Since the author used that statistic and didn't immediately launch into a justification of how it's not completely crazy, I can't trust this article enough to read further." The methodology is in the footnote. But at least cancer deaths from smoking deaths lag by several decades, so I don't see why it would be at all unusual for there to be more smoking deaths than current smokers.