A new study suggests that accelerating the decline in global tobacco smoking could lead to significant population health benefits, including increased life expectancy and the prevention of millions of premature deaths by 2050. Smoking is a leading risk factor for preventable death and illness worldwide, accounting for over one in ten deaths in 2021. While smoking rates have fallen in recent decades, the pace of decline varies, and there is still substantial opportunity to expand proven policies and interventions to achieve ambitious smoking reduction goals.
Quitting Smoking, Living Longer
Published in The Lancet Public Health journal, the study estimated that if global tobacco smoking rates dropped to 5% from actual levels and then continued to decrease at the same rate as observed over two decades until 2050, such a scenario could yield one extra year of life expectancy for an average young male person compared with a business-as-usual scenario between now and the middle of this century, alongside an additional two months of life expectancy for a typical female travel companion. If smoking were abolished by 2023, the difference could be greater still — as much as 1.5 extra years of life for males and 0.4 years for females in 2050.
Published in The Lancet, these forecasts were generated by researchers with the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries and Risk Factors (GBD) Tobacco Forecasting Collaborators using IHME´s Future Health Scenarios platform. They modelled how reducing smoking prevalence would affect population health in 204 countries, adjusting for age, sex and the leading causes of smoking-related mortality (such as cancer, ischaemic heart disease and COPD).
Tackling the Tobacco Epidemic
The results suggest that mandated changes to the price of cigarettes, in taxation or regulation could have a major impact on the global health burden of smoking. Whilst many countries have set challenging targets to reduce smoking prevalence to below 5 per cent in the future, the study authors conclude that concerted and specific action is needed accelerate the decline in use and achieve a tobacco endgame on a global level.
Those efforts need to remain focused in order to curb, and eventually eliminate, smoking around the world, said study senior author Professor Stein Emil Vollset. The authors…conclude, ‘Our findings highlight that ending smoking could have a major health and social welfare impact.’ Together they write that considerable progress has been made in reducing tobacco use worldwide over the past 30 years, but this success is not universal as the rate of decline and number of smokers vary among countries, illustrating the ongoing need for comprehensive concentration on this root concern of public health.
Charting a Smoke-Free Future
The broad scope of the study helps provide important information for policymakers, public health bodies and those trying to combat the tobacco epidemic. The researchers demonstrated how many lives could be saved and how much those people would live longer into the future by making assumptions about the health benefits of reducing smoking prevalence to 5% or eradicating it altogether.
Strategies including the implementation of evidence-based tobacco control policies, increasing smoking cessation programs opportunities and awareness about risks related to smoking are key drivers behind moving the 2025 target date forward. As the world continues to mitigate the human and financial costs of smoking, this look at projected life expectancy serves as a forceful reminder that with concerted international efforts on a global scale, as many as one billion premature deaths could be prevented by 2050.
