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  3. Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States. It was 50 years ago this month that America’

Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States. It was 50 years ago this month that America’

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问题     Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States. It was 50 years ago this month that America’s Surgeon General sounded that warning, marking the beginning of the end of cigarette manufacturing—and of smoking itself—as a respectable activity.
    Some 20 million Americans have died from the habit since then. But advertising restrictions and smoking bans have had their effect: the proportion of American adults who smoke has dropped from 43% to 18%: smoking rates among teenagers are at a record low. In many other countries the trends are similar.
    The current Surgeon General, Boris Lushniak, marked the half-century with a report on January 17th, declaring smoking even deadlier than previously thought. He added diabetes, colorectal cancer and other ailments to the list of ills it causes, and promised end-game strategies to extinguish cigarettes altogether.
    New technologies such as e-cigarettes promise to deliver nicotine less riskily. E-cigarettes give users a hit of vapour infused with nicotine. In America, sales of the manufacturer, who is the fastest e-cigarettes-adopter, have jumped from nearly nothing five years ago to at least 1 billion in 2013.
    At first, it looked as if e-cigarettes might lure smokers from the big tobacco brands to startups such as NJOY. But tobacco companies have bigger war chests, more knowledge of smokers’ habits and better ties to distributors than the newcomers. Some experts reckon Americans will puff more e-cigarettes than normal ones within a decade, but tobacco folk are skeptical. E-cigarettes account for just 1% of America’s cigarette market. In Europe 7% of smokers had tried e-cigarettes by 2012 but only 1% kept them up.
    And no one knows what sort of restrictions regulators will eventually place on reduced risk products, including e-cigarettes. If these companies can manage the transition to less harmful smokes, and convince regulators to be sensible, the tobacco giants could keep up the sort of performance that has made their shares such a fine investment over the years. But some analysts are not so sure.
    Many tobacco firms are struggling to deliver the consistency of the earnings-per-share model we’ve seen in the past. If that persists, investors may fall out of love with the industry. A half-century after the Surgeon General’ s alarm, they, and hopeless smokers, are its last remaining friends.
What is the passage mainly about?
选项 A、The potency of tobacco’ s advertising bans.
B、The hostile regulatory climate of tobacco in the U.S..
C、The current situation and challenge of big tobacco firms.
D、The introduction and growth of e-cigarettes.
答案C
解析 主旨题。根据题干关键词需纵观全文。文章前三段讲吸烟的危害在美国引起重视，并加大了广告限制及禁烟标志力度；第四段引出电子香烟；第五段指出电子香烟所占的市场份额；后面谈到烟草公司的反应及发展趋势。因此，正确答案是C。
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