Tobacco use and premature death

The GBD survey ranks disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) from chronic-obstructive pulmonary disorder and lung cancer highly among people aged >50 years, highlighting the need for smoking-control measures to drive down these harms.^[3] However, some encouraging data are the declining rates of lung cancer DALYs among people aged 50–74 (although there is no such decline among people aged >74 years).^[3] This could reflect a greater response to smoking-control measures among younger people, which would translate into reduced tobacco-related harms in the years to come.^[3]

Reference:
[1] United States Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Smoking – 50 years of progress. 2014. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/50th-anniversary/index.htm. Accessed November 2021.

[2] WHO. Tobacco fact sheet. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco. Accessed Nov 2021.

[3] GBD 2019 Diseases and Injuries Collaborators. Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Lancet 2020; 396 (10258): 1204–1222.