Smoking has severe impacts on overall health wherein it damages nearly every organ in the body. It is one of the leading causes of respiratory diseases, including chronic bronchitis and also increases the risk of lung cancer. Smoking also harms the cardiovascular system, raising the chances of heart attacks, strokes and peripheral artery disease.
Also, it weakens the immune system, thereby, making people more susceptible to infections. Long-term smoking can reduce life expectancy by more than a decade. A new study published in The Lancet Public Health journal found that cutting down smoking to five per cent of current rates by 2050 would increase life expectancy by a year among men and 0.
2 years in women. According to the current trends, the researchers found that smoking rates around the world could continue to reduce to 21 per cent in men and about four per cent in women by 2050. Researchers forming the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries and Risk Factors (GBD) Tobacco Forecasting Collaborators said that along with improving life expectancy, accelerating efforts to eliminate tobacco smoking could avoid 876 million years of lives lost to death.
The researchers also found that banning sales of cigarettes and other tobacco products could prevent 1.2 million lung cancer deaths across 185 countries by 2095. The authors of the study said that of these deaths, nearly two-thirds would be averted in low- and middle-income countries, because they tend to have more younger populations .