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| Sunday, 6 March 2005 |
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UK tobbaco death toll 6.3 million in half century LONDON, Saturday, Smoking in the last 50 years has killed 6.3 million people in England and Wales - equal to nearly the entire current population of London - a leading cancer charity said on Saturday. Forty-two percent of the deaths of men aged 35-69 and 16 percent of women were caused by smoking between 1950 and 2000, according to figures released by the charity Cancer Research UK. But Professor Richard Peto, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford who compiled the figures, said more recently many people have stopped smoking, which had led to a drop in rates of tobacco deaths. "On average, those who continue to smoke lose 10 years of life but stopping smoking at ages 60, 50, 40 or 30 gains 3, 6, 9 or the full 10 years of life expectancy. Of those who continue to smoke, half will be killed by their habit," he said in a statement. The figures, which were released ahead of No Smoking Day on Wednesday, show male deaths caused by smoking peaked in the 1960s while deaths in women, who took up the habit later than men, hit a high in the 1980s. "These shocking statistics illustrate the devastating impact of smoking on the lives of people across the country," said Maura Gillespie, of the British Heart Foundation. "Stopping smoking is the single most important thing any smoker can do to stave off heart disease and seize back years of life." |
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