As reported by the BBC and elsewhere, a full third of men that are now under age 20 are going to die prematurely due to their high levels of smoking if they don’t quit. “Armenpress” informs about the aforementioned, citing BBC. “Unless they stop, about half of them will eventually be killed by their habit”, said the article’s co-author, Professor Chen Zhengming from Oxford University.
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The analysis combined data from two large studies, 15 years apart, that tracked health outcomes for China’s smokers. After carefully looking over the smoking habits and health issues of the participants, researchers found that in 2010 were 1 million tobacco deaths. The only positive news was that tobacco-related deaths are falling in women, who hardly smoke at all in comparison – just 3.2 percent of women were smokers between 2004 and 2008 compared to 68 percent of men.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that smoking causes every one in five deaths in US. The smoking rate among Chinese women is plummeting, but the same cannot be said for their male counterparts.
Deaths caused by cigarette smoking in China will double to two million people in 2030, a study says.
The study appears in The Lancet. The first series of investigations were conducted in the early ’90s and it involved approximately 250,000 men.
Around the world, tobacco kills up to half of its users, and more than 5 million deaths annually result from direct tobacco use, according to the World Health Organization. The industry accounts for more than 7% of the government’s annual tax revenue and net income.
Richard Peto, co-author from the University of Oxford, said, “The key to avoid this huge wave of deaths is cessation, and if you are a young man, don’t start”.
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They also argued education efforts are hindered by common myths about smoking — including “the belief that protective biological mechanisms specific to Asian populations make smoking less hazardous, that it is easy to quit smoking, and that tobacco use is an intrinsic and ancient part of Chinese culture”. He noted that a substantial increase in cigarette prices in China could potentially save tens of millions of lives, and the country’s economic boom in the past few decades could literally go up in smoke. A few Chinese people, however, are aware of the deadly effects of smoking and willingly decide to quit.
