Asian nations sitting on early tobacco epidemic

Asian countries are in the early stages of a tobacco smoking epidemic with habits mirroring those of the US from past decades — setting the stage for a spike in future deaths from smoking-related diseases, warn researchers.

Using long-term data from cohort studies from mainlandChina, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, the researchers fromthe Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville, Tennessee, said thatfuture deaths were likely to echo the pattern that occurred in the US as thepopularity of smoking increased during and after World War II, which resultedin lung cancer mortality peaking around 1990.

   

“There is about a 30-year gap or incubation period forthe mortality to occur. Smoking takes about 20 or 30 years to have this fulleffect on lung cancer mortality,” said Zheng, the study’s senior author ina paper published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Tobacco control interventions may be having an effect on thesmoking epidemic in some countries or areas because male smokers in the mostrecent birth cohort tended to quit smoking at younger ages.

“Asian countries that are richer, like Japan, SouthKorea and urban China, are doing a better job with this than rural China, Indiaand other places,” said Danxia Yu, co-first author of the study.

The study calls for immediate actions for all Asiancountries to implement comprehensive tobacco control policies, includingraising tobacco taxes, implementing laws for smoke-free areas, banning tobaccoadvertising, requiring warning labels for tobacco products and providing helpwith quitting.

“Younger people in more recent cohorts started smokingat a younger age, and they smoked a lot more,” Zheng said. “Thedeaths due to tobacco smoking also increased with this cohort.”

Women in Asia have a much lower rate for smoking. Theaverage percentage of women smokers for all 20 cohort studies was 7.8 per centcompared to 65.4 per cent for men, the study noted.

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