Smoking killed almost 8 million people in 2019 and the number of smokers rose as the habit was picked up by young people around the world, according to new research.
A study published in the Lancet on Thursday said efforts to curb the habit had been outstripped by population growth with 150 million more people smoking in the nine years from 1990, reaching an all-time high of 1.1 billion.
The study’s authors said governments need to focus on reducing the uptake of smoking among young people, as 89% of new smokers were addicted by the age of 25 but beyond that age were unlikely to start.
“Young people are particularly vulnerable to addiction, and with high rates of cessation remaining elusive worldwide, the tobacco epidemic will continue for years to come unless countries can dramatically reduce the number of new smokers starting each year,” said the study’s lead author Marissa Reitsma, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Though the prevalence of smoking has reduced globally over […]
With climate change and the ongoing societal turbulence, it’s my belief that many of them do not believe they have much of a future ahead.
It may be that some of them saw the scientific study at the French Institute which said that a person who smokes cigarettes has an 80% or more chance of NOT getting the Covid0-19 virus; and has been duplicated by other studies. I do not like smoking and certainly do not want to see kids starting the habit, but if it works and you cannot get to a vaccine, why not do this just to protect yourself?
P.S.: This was from the Pasteur Institute, one of the most prestigious scientific facilities in the world.