 Drug lord Jesse Helms. Jesse Helms. Jesse Helms. Card number three. Number one killer drug. Tobacco is the one drug of abuse in the U.S. 53 million. Tobacco is the number one drug of you abuse in the U.S. 53 million Americans are addicted to it. Tobacco is also the most deadly drug in common use. In 1989, 1989, while 2,000 people died of cocaine use, 390,000 died from tobacco. Even passive smoking, breathing in other people's smoke, causes 3,800 deaths a year. 80% of adults who smoke want to quit but fully two-thirds of them have tried and failed. Tobacco use costs society 50 billion a year in healthcare, insurance, and lost productivity. As with alcohol, tobacco companies target low-income people. Some 35% of tobacco billboards, billboard advertising, is placed in ghetto neighborhoods. Government publicity on the hazards of smoking has resulted in 5,000 Americans quitting every day. Teens take up smoking at the rate of 3,000 a day, leaving a shortfall which has caused U.S. tobacco companies to aggressively expand their markets worldwide. It is here that we see the power of the tobacco lobby led in the U.S. Senate by men from tobacco producing states like North Carolina, North Carolina Republican Senator Jesse Helms, to whom Philip Morris, makers of Marlboro cigarettes and Miller beer, as well as craft foods, donated $200,000 for his successful 1990 re-election campaign. In 1989, tobacco companies saw 20% growth in exports largely as a result of strong-arm tactics by the U.S. government to force countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to open their markets to American tobacco or face trade sanctions. In 1990, Thailand, which has discouraged smoking for 20 years and forbidden tobacco ads succumbed to U.S. pressure. It now allows U.S. tobacco companies to sell and advertise their products. And remember, this set of cards came out in 1991. So this is as of 1991, the history that we're reading here.