Early Deaths From Smoking Will Soon Double, Says Report

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 23 Oct 2007 - 1:00 PDT

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An internatoinal conference of health workers in Beijing heard that the current worldwide total of premature deaths caused by tobacco is set to double as developing countries reap the consequences of addiction.

China currently contains a third of the world's smokers, and the annual meeting last month of the International Pharmacy Federation was staged in the Chinese capital as its leaders begin to realise that tobacco, which is currently a state industry, does more harm than good.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) already blames cigarettes for five million premature deaths globally a year. That will double to an average of 10 million a year over the course of the 21st century unless government and health agencies take steps to cut consumption, the conference heard.

David Taylor, author of a report on the world's tobacco habit, pointed to the widely acknowledged link between rising cigarette sales and rising tobacco related deaths, which follow roughly 25 years later.

He said: "We can expect an annual global toll of 10 million because although Europe is making efforts to reduce consumption, and of course there is no certainty it will succeed, smoking is so widespread and continues to rise in countries such as China and India."

The clouds of tobacco smoke circulating in almost every building in China are an everyday hazard.

Professor Taylor said, "Pharmacists could play an important role in helping smokers quit through advice and smoking-cessation products."

However a test of China's resolve to tackle smoking related disease was whether the country would license products such as nicotine patches to help people give up. Currently, smoking cessation aids are unavailable.

Professor Taylor's report, Ending the Global Tobacco Pandemic, stressed the bleak outlook for smokers, who tended to be among the poorer educated and less affluent people in any society.

It said: "While countries such as the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are now seeing reductions in smoking and declining male (but still typically rising female) tobacco-related mortality, those of southern and eastern Europe and nations such as China, India and Japan have not yet fully experienced the health impacts of increased smoking rates in men, or indeed, women."

Despite the countries post-war economic boom, Japan featured among those countries where deaths had not yet peaked because the habit was adopted on a large scale by men and then women much later than in Europe.

The report singled out California as the model to be pursued. Even within Britain, which is among the more successful European countries in discouraging smoking, rates were twice that of California.

Only 13 per cent of California's total adult population, and less than 10 per cent of women, smoke.

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