Effect of Smoking on Life Span

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 20 Jun 2004 - 14:00 PDT

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"Action on Smoking and Health" tells us that a 30-year-old smoker can expect to live about 35 more years, whereas a 30-year-old nonsmoker can expect to live 53 more years. The children of a parent or parents who smoke may be at risk from the genetic damage done to the parent before conception (because of their previous smoking), the direct effects to them in the womb, and the passive smoke they are exposed to after they are born.

{"Smokers urged to weigh the 'facts' during the 'Great American Smoke-Out,' Vital Signs, The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Virginia, Nov. 14, 1993, written by June Russell, a member of Smoke-Free Charlottesville}

The amount of life expectancy lost for each pack of cigarettes smoked is 28 minutes, and the years of life expectancy a typical smoker loses is 25 years.
{"Dying to Quit," 1998 book by Janet Brigham}

Every cigarette a man smokes reduces his life by 11 minutes. Each carton of cigarettes thus represents a day and a half of lost life. Every year a man smokes a pack a day, he shortens his life by almost 2 months.
{University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter, April 2000}

There are some 1.1 billion people who smoke on our planet earth. Just less than one-third of all adults in the world smoke regularly. Tobacco deaths will not only occur in old age but will start when smokers are about age 35. Half of those who die from smoking-related causes will die in middle age, each losing about 25 years of life expectancy. More than 95% of the tobacco consumed is in the form of cigarettes. About half of all smokers who undergo lung cancer take up smoking again.
{"Dying to Quit," a 1998 book by Janet Brigham}

http://www.jrussellshealth.com/smoking.html