United States: The American Cancer Society estimates through their new research that successful anti-smoking initiatives and tobacco taxation have saved about 4 million individuals from developing lung cancer over the last five decades.
Decades of Tobacco Control Saves Lives
A new publication in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians illustrates how significant measures to reduce smoking led to 3.8 million lung cancer death preventions while providing Americans with 76 million additional years of life, as reported by HealthDay.
“The substantial estimated numbers of averted lung cancer deaths and person-years of life gained highlight the remarkable effect of progress against smoking on reducing premature mortality from lung cancer,” lead investigator Dr. Farhad Islami, the ACS’ senior scientific director for cancer disparity research, said in a news release.
Lung Cancer Prevention: A Major Success Story
Research indicates that lung cancer death prevention alone accounts for fifty percent of all successfully avoided cancer deaths in the past decades.
“However,” Islami added, “Despite these findings, lung cancer is still the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, and smoking-attributable morbidity and mortality from other cancers or diseases remain high.”
Research investigators studied federal health data spanning from 1970 to 2022 which they used to calculate predicted cancer mortality rates before comparing actual death counts to these projections.
Who Benefited the Most?
During this five-decade period a total of 2.2 million lung cancer deaths expected for men and 1.6 million for women did not become fatalities.
Lung cancer death estimates reveal that white populations prevented almost 3.2 million cases but Black Americans avoided more than 527,000 cases.
More than 51% of total cancer deaths reduced during this period resulted from prevented instances of lung cancer.
Challenges Still Remain
“Reducing smoking through tobacco control has saved millions of lives and can save millions more in the future,” Islami said. “But we need a stronger commitment at the local, state, and federal levels to help further reduce smoking and substantially augment the progress against smoking-related mortality.”
Islami pointed out that it’s crucial that these initiatives focus on populations that are more likely to smoke.
The Need for Stronger Tobacco Control Policies
The smoking prevalence, along with lung cancer mortality, stands five times higher among those who possess a high school diploma or less but do not have college degrees, according to Donald Berry’s statements.
Lisa Lacasse from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network insists that the findings confirm the ongoing existence of preventable fatalities, as reported by HealthDay.
“Increased and sustained funding for evidence-based tobacco prevention and cessation programs is needed now more than ever as part of a comprehensive approach to reducing tobacco use and, ultimately, the cancer burden for everyone in the U.S.,” she said in a news release.
Lacasse emphasized the importance of open smoking cessation services together with increased tobacco taxation and smoke-free policy coverage.