by 
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the extremely first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health, and in a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association scientific study has estimated that efforts controlling tobacco in the last 50 years have saved 8 million lives.
The researchers derived their results by conducting a study to model reductions in smoking-related mortality associated with implementation of tobacco control since 1964. Actual smoking-related deaths from 1964 through 2012 were in contrast to estimated deaths under no tobacco control.
Since 1964, the researchers were able to attribute 17.7 million deaths to smoking-related complications. During that same period of time, approximately reduction of 8 million premature smoking-attributable deaths (or “lives saved”) was associated with tobacco control. The estimated quantity of lives saved every year has increased steadily over time.
“Those efforts by governments, voluntary organizations, and the private sector-education on smoking dangers, increases in cigarette taxes, smoke-free air laws, media campaigns, marketing and purchasers restrictions, lawsuits, and cessation treatment programs-have comprised the nation’s tobacco control efforts,” according to background information on the research.
The researchers also claim, “Today, one half century after the surgeon general’s first pronouncement on the toll that smoking exacts from U.S. society, nearly a fifth of U.S. adults still smoke, and smoking continues to claim hundreds of thousands of lives annually. Not one other behavior compares to contributing so heavily towards the nation’s mortality burden. Tobacco control has been a great public health success story but requires continued efforts to eliminate tobacco-related morbidity and mortality.”
According to Dr. Adam Posner, a pulmonologist with Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, Ill., “Smoking is among the most worst reaction you can have for your body. It damages your lungs, heart and vascular system, and also your skin. We must continue to discourage this behavior, especially among teens.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers five quick tips for quitting smoking, together with a number of other resources that smokers can use of get help quitting.
