Smokers today don’t necessarily face deadlier cigarettes, but they are getting older. A new analysis of federal health data finds that although a smoker’s risk of dying from a smoking-related cause appeared to increase by nearly 50 percent between 1987 and 2013, that spike is largely an illusion created by age. Researcher Ralph Lawton and his colleagues used National Health Survey data linked to death records and found that at the same given age, the association between smoking and mortality has barely budged in recent decades. The apparent increase in risk comes from more smokers: in other words, fewer young people and more middle-aged and older adults.
Smoking rates among adults have fallen from more than 40% in the 1960s to around 12% in 2022, and young people now smoke below 4% in 2021, according to News week. Those who continue to smoke are disproportionately aged between 45 and 64, a group more prone to serious illness and death, skewing population-wide risk estimates upward. The study concludes that smoking remains a major and preventable cause of mortality, but models that track its harms must take into account the aging population of smokers to avoid exaggerating the growing danger. In addition, “according to the authors, similar methods could be used to examine the effects of other risk factors that vary with age, including obesity, poor diet or lack of education,” notes a press release.
Gn Health
