research
Smoking and Inequalities: Quantifying Policies and Interventions
- Publication date
- 10 December 2013
- Publisher
- __Abstract__
Smoking has been identified as a risk factor for many decades . The strongest and most comprehensive evidence we have on the association between any risk factor and mortality comes from studies of smoking. Smoking is causally related to morbidity and premature mortality from many diseases.
The Global Burden of Disease Project (GBD) has estimated that, 4.83 million deaths occurred due to smoking in the year 2000. Surprisingly, these estimates were nearly evenly divided between developing and industrialized countries. Approximately 80% of the deaths attributable to smoking were observed among men, while 20% were observed among women. By 2010 the overall number of deaths had reached 5.70 million with 75% of deaths among men and 25% among women. It was as high as 6.30 million, including deaths from second-hand smoke.