India is caught in the midst of a catastrophic smoking epidemic, which is causing one in five of all male deaths in middle age and will cause about one million deaths a year during the 2010s.
Seventy percent of these deaths (600,000 male and 100,000 female) will be between the ages of 30 and 69.
The findings are from the first nationally representative study of smoking in India as a whole. The research, a collaboration between India, Canada and the UK, is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study found that, among men, about 61 percent of those who smoke can expect to die at ages 30-69 compared with only 41 percent of otherwise similar non-smokers. Among women, 62 percent of those who smoke can expect to die at ages 30-69 compared with only 38 percent of non-smokers. This means that smoking accounts for most of the difference in premature deaths between men and women in India.
Professor Sir Richard Peto, of the Medical Research Council Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford and one of the co-authors on the paper, said: “We were surprised by just how dangerous smoking was for Indian populations. But while smoking kills, stopping works. British studies show that stopping smoking is remarkably effective. At present, however, only 2 percent of adults have quit in India, and often only after falling ill.”
The study found there were no safe levels of smoking, but while the hazards of smoking even a few Indian roll-ups (bidis) a day were substantial, the dangers of smoking just a few cigarettes a day were even greater, corresponding to almost a doubling of the risk of death in middle age.