In recent decades there has been a large increase in cigarette smoking by young men, and the research shows the consequences that are now emerging.
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After carefully looking over the smoking habits and health issues of the participants, researchers found that in 2010 were 1 million tobacco deaths.
“Conversely, the women of working age in China now smoke much less than the older generation”, said a statement from The Lancet.
And if uptake continues at its current rate, the study estimates deaths in China due to smoking will reach two million a year by 2030.
The scientists conducted two nationwide studies, 15 years apart, covering hundreds of thousands of people.
The study, publicized in The Lancet medical treatment document, discovered that more of young men in China get started on to cigarette, mostly before time 20, so that unless of course they can drop it permanently, around fifty percent of persons who kick off will likely subsequently go away through their addiction. And in urban areas this proportion is higher, at 25 percent and rising.
China consumes over one third of total cigarettes in the world.
The researchers spent more than 15 years and pored over two national surveys to collect relevant data about the millions of smokers in China. Even more shocking is the fact that more than half of them will eventually die if they don’t quit this habit. The first involved a quarter of a million men, while the second study looks at half a million men and women and is ongoing. Smoking causes lung cancer, which is fatal, and can cause premature death from chronic conditions such as stroke, heart disease, and high blood pressure. About 10 percent of the women born in the 1930s smoked, but only about 1percent of those born in the 1960s did so.
“Without rapid, committed, and widespread action to reduce smoking levels, China will face enormous numbers of premature deaths”, said Liming Li, a professor at the Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing who helped lead the analysis.
Coauthor Prof. Sir Richard Peto, from the University of Oxford, attributes the fall in smoking in western countries to the increase in price, and suggests that raising tobacco prices substantially in China could save tens of millions of lives.
Tax collected from cigarette manufacturers is an important source of income in China.
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“With effective measures to accelerate cessation, the growing epidemic of premature death from tobacco can be halted and then reversed, as in other countries”, the study added.
