Good and Bad News about Latest Outcomes for Smoking

Extract

In 1964, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States . Before this, health suspicions about smoking existed, but not much more than common parental homilies to adolescents that smoking cigarettes would “stunt their growth.”

The report presented the first clear evidence that cigarette smoking could be linked to lung cancer, bronchitis, and other chronic and life-threatening diseases. Many people got the message, and U.S. smoking rates have fallen, from 42% of adults in 1965 to 19% in 2010. Even so, two new studies show mixed results of good and bad news.

The good: Quitting smoking before age 40 years reduces the risk of death by continuing to smoke by about 90%. Led by Prabhat Jha, M.D., Ph.D., from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and head of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael’s Hospital, the study analyzed smoking and smoking-cessation histories of 113,752 women and 88,496 men aged 25 years and older, linking histories to causes of deaths in these groups through 2006. Those who quit smoking by age 34 years lived 10 years longer, on average, than those who continued to smoke, with life expectancies comparable to those of never smokers. Smokers aged 35–44 years who quit lived 9 years longer, and those aged 45–54 years lived 6 years longer. Even quitting smoking between ages 55 and 64 years improved life expectancy by 4 years compared with those who continued to smoke.