Study: Cigarettes on pace to kill 1 in 3 Chinese men

Insight

Researchers revealed startling findings in a pair of articles about the toll cigarettes are taking on public health. If current trends continue, they say cigarettes will kill one in three men in the decades to come.

Smoking causes lung cancer, which is fatal, and can cause premature death from chronic conditions such as stroke, heart disease, and high blood pressure.

CCTV America’s Jim Spellman has Insight.

More details:

  • In 2010, smoking killed roughly one million people in China. At current rates, that figure will double by 2030.
  • While two-thirds of men in China smoke, only 3 percent of women do.
  • China is the top cigarette consuming country by far. In 2014, 2.5 trillion cigarettes were sold in China – that’s more than the next top 29 cigarette-smoking countries combined.
Tobacco tax revenue in China from 2012 to 2014 (in billion yuan)

Tobacco tax revenue in China from 2012 to 2014 (in billion yuan)


Richard Peto on smoking and public health
A co-author of the mortality study called this “an epidemic in slow motion.” CCTV America’s Asieh Namdar spoke to Professor Richard Peto of the University of Oxford, England, who said there’s a simple reason Chinese men are affected by this more than women are.

The study found that about two-thirds of young Chinese men become cigarette smokers, and most start before they are 20.

Top cigarette-consuming countries in 2014 (in trillion cigarettes)

Top cigarette-consuming countries in 2014 (in trillion cigarettes)

The scientists conducted two large studies 15 years apart, with the first one published in the 1990s and involving a quarter of a million men. The second study is ongoing, and involved half a million men and women.