The anti-smoking measures have saved millions of lives

25 years ago began fighting snuff for the benefit of health. The three pillars of this initiative have been the ban on smoking in public places, the tax increase on cigarettes and conducting awareness compañas. During this quarter century in the United States almost 800 000 lives saved , considering only deaths averted because of lung cancer . The results of a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) show that the efforts in this country between 1975 and 2000 towards tobacco control, gave excellent results. At first, the smoking ban ruled only for indoors, until in 2010 it began to consider the possibility that also govern for sites open. Thus, in 2011, New York could not be established that smoking in any public park or square. This provision of course includes the famous Central Park.

The study in detail the research team led by Dr. Suresh Moolgavkar, a member of the program of Biostatistics and Biomathematics Research Center Fred Hutchinson Cancer Seattle, U.S., developed a sophisticated model to estimate changes in smoking patterns that North American country. From this analysis, we extracted between 1975 and 2000 were 2.1 million lung cancer deaths among men and about 1.05 million between women. With that number in hand, considering what happened earlier, researchers argued that because of the actions averted 552 000 deaths among 243 000 men and women. "

Quitting for reducing deaths from lung cancer. The problem is that despite the spread, even many people who smoke . But this should not make us throw up their hands because we know that the most effective way to reduce the burden of lung cancer is to get smokers to quit but especially prevent non-smokers begin to do it, "explained the team members Moolgavkar in the online edition of JNCI. "And we must not forget that beyond the lung cancer, smoking cessation also reduces heart attack rates, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), "they concluded.