More bad news for smokers
2004-06-23 13:55
London - Smokers are likely to die 10 years younger than non-smokers but kicking the habit early can slash the risk of a premature grave, the world's longest-running study into the hazards of tobacco use said on Tuesday.
It warned that the dangers of smoking were even worse than feared, but if someone gives up cigarettes at the age of 50, the statistical risk of an early death is halved - and someone who quits at 30 avoids almost all of it.
The study, launched in 1951 by Oxford University professor Richard Doll, was published 50 years ago this week and marked a watershed by establishing once and for all the link between lung cancer and smoking.
It covers 34 439 male British doctors, who were quizzed about their smoking habits and health at intervals thereafter - in 1957, 1966, 1971, 1978 and 1991.
The final questionnaire was sent out in 2001, and the conclusions were presented in London by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Tuesday ahead of publication on Saturday.
Doll, now aged 90, pointed to these findings:
Men who smoke are at least twice as likely to die before the age of 70 as non-smokers.
At least half, and as many as two-thirds, of all people who smoke persistently from youth are eventually killed by their habit. About a quarter of them are killed while they are in the 35-69 age bracket.
Smokers are seriously out of kilter with British health trends. While non-smokers have enjoyed progressively longer lives, the lives of smokers have shortened.
"Over the past few decades, prevention and better treatment of disease has halved non-smoker death rates among the elderly in Britain," Doll, who was knighted for his landmark work in the 1950s, said in a press release.
"But these improvements have been completely nullified by the rapidly increasing hazards of tobacco for those who continue to smoke cigarettes."
The study highlighted particular risks that faced Britain's World War II generation.
Men born around 1920 and who never gave up smoking faced the highest mortality risks of all: two-thirds of them were killed by their habit.
The main reason for this was that the British armed forces provided low-cost cigarettes to young conscripts, thus encouraging an intensive, early addiction.
Doll's study is remarkable for its longevity.
Saturday's publication will come 50 years to the day after its first findings were published.
Medical research that spans more than a decade is extremely valuable but also extremely rare because it is so expensive.