WASHINGTON, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Declines in cigarette smoking among Americans since the mid-1950s prevented nearly 800,000 lung cancer deaths between 1975 and 2000, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Results of the National Cancer Institute-funded study, conducted by a consortium of six research groups in the U.S. and the Netherlands, were published online Wednesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
For the study, the researchers reconstructed detailed smoking histories for those born between 1890 and 1970, and then estimated lung cancer deaths associated with these smoking histories using mathematical equations. In this way, the researchers were able to estimate the impact of changes in smoking patterns resulting from tobacco-control efforts on deaths from lung cancer between 1975 and 2000 after the U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health was released in 1964.
In addition to modeling the impact of actual tobacco control efforts on lung cancer mortality rates, the researchers also estimated lung cancer deaths between 1975 and 2000 under two opposite scenarios:
If all U.S. cigarette smokers had successfully quit smoking in the wake of the 1964 Surgeon General's report and no one else started smoking, an estimated 2.5 million people would have not died from lung cancer (1.6 million men and 883,000 women would not have been diagnosed with the disease).
In the absence of tobacco control programs and policies, if smoking behaviors had not changed after the Surgeon General's report, an additional 552,000 men and 243,000 women would have died of lung cancer.
Since mid-1960s, tobacco-control efforts in the U.S. have included restrictions on smoking in public places, increases in cigarette excise tax, limits on underage access to cigarettes, and efforts to increase public awareness of the hazards of smoking.
