Fig. 2

Risk of death comparing current with never smoking, according to amount smoked. Analyses were restricted to common causes of death among those established as caused by smoking: chronic lung disease, coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease and lung cancer. *Age-sex standardised rate per 1000 person-years. Hazard ratios (HR) are adjusted for age, sex, region of residence, alcohol consumption, annual household income, education attainment, country of birth (Australia vs. Other) and private health insurance; hazard ratios for cancer of lung were also adjusted for fruit intake. Hazard ratios represented by squares are plotted on a log scale, against the median number of cigarettes within each category reported at resurvey among those who reported being current smokers at resurvey (Additional file 1: Table S10), as this was considered the best estimate of long-term mean consumption among all in that category. Rates in never smokers were plotted against the “0” on the x-axis; areas of squares are proportional to the natural logarithm of the number of deaths