Smoking – a killer to be reckoned with

One smoker in every two will die as a result of smoking! The figure isn’t new but it has taken on a certain resonance in the light of the results of a 30-year-long Norwegian study. Half the smokers in this study who regularly consumed a packet of cigarettes a day died from smoking-related causes.

This is a wide-ranging study as it involved over 54,000 Norwegians out of a population of only 4.7 million. And the very least one can say is that smoking really is a killer. Over the 30 years of the study, around 50% of the men who were heavy smokers died, compared with only 18% among non-smokers. The results among women are comparable, with 33% of deaths among the smokers, compared with only 13% among the non-smokers.

According to researchers at the University of Oslo, more than two men in every three of those who smoked died or fell victim to cardiovascular disease. This is still a higher percentage than among women, where these diseases “only” account for 50% of morbimortality. However, with changes in social behaviour, these percentages could draw closer.