The proportion of all male deaths at age 40 to 79 attributed to smoking has doubled to around 20 per cent now from about 10 per cent in the early 1990s.
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Chinese people consumes over a third of the world’s cigarettes, and has a sixth of the global smoking death toll.
The analysis combined data from two large studies, 15 years apart, that tracked health outcomes for China’s smokers.
England One in three of most the young men in China will get murdered by tobacco products except if a rich amount of one have success in kicking the habit of tobacco, research scientists said on Friday.
The first study, in the 1990s, involved 250,000 men; the second is ongoing, and involves 500,000 men and women.
Around half of those men will die from the habit, it concludes. It is expected to pass 2 million per year by 2030 without considerable interventions to reduce the smoking rate. Plus historically, “China’s leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping were very heavy smokers and always photographed with a cigarette”, he observes.
The report doesn’t offer all gloom: It shows the percentage of smokers who quit grew from 3% in 1991 to 9% in 2006, and those who quit before they developed any serious illness had about the same disease risk as non-smokers after 10 years, which should encourage others to drop the habit. Consequently, female tobacco-related deaths have decreased dramatically.
Currently, about two-thirds of young Chinese men smoke, and a majority begin to light up before age 20.
“The only key to averting this huge wave of deaths is smoking cessation“, said Li Liming, a study co-author from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.
But researchers say this trend can be slowed or turned around if smokers quit. Studies show that we are seeing a significant decrease in tobacco deaths over the last 20 years in direct correlation with the increased price per cigarette pack.
“Being a government monopoly, China Tobacco (the Chinese National Tobacco Corporation) provides over seven percent of the central government’s annual revenue through both taxes and net income”, they wrote.
“This study is a sobering reminder that reducing tobacco use must remain a focus for public health globally as well as in the UK”.
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Smokers have about twice the mortality rate of people who never smoked, with a higher risk of lung cancer, stroke and heart attack.
