View of the cigarettes and tobacco stack. The tobacco plant is part of the genus nicotiana and of the solanaceae (nightshade) family.
According to a modeling study released on Thursday, prohibiting the sale of tobacco to those born between 2006 and 2010 could avert about 1.2 million lung cancer deaths by the end of the century.
According to the World Health Organization, smoking is to blame for about 85% of all cases of lung cancer, the deadliest cancer globally.
According to a new study by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), if current trends continue, people born between 2006 and 2010 will lose their lives to lung cancer at a rate of almost three million.
But if tobacco sales were banned for these 650 million people, around 1.2 million deaths could be prevented by 2095, estimated the modelling research published in The Lancet Public Health journal.
The study, one of the first studies aiming to assess the impact of a tobacco-free generation, drew on data about cancer cases and deaths from 185 countries.
More than 45 percent of lung cancer deaths among men around the world could be prevented, and nearly 31 percent among women, the research found.
“This difference is linked to the tobacco industry’s gender-targeted marketing over the past few decades,” IARC researcher and study co-author Isabelle Soerjomataram said in a statement.
Schemes Already Underway
However, the modelling suggested that banning tobacco products could prevent more deaths among women than men in some regions, including parts of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as North America.
In western Europe, women could be saved at the highest rate (78%) while men could be saved at the highest rate (nearly 75%) in central and eastern Europe.
The study cautioned that the “deaths that we estimated could not be prevented could be due to other risk factors associated with lung cancer”, such as air pollution or exposure to second-hand smoke.
Tobacco-free generation initiatives have already been implemented in some countries, such as New Zealand and parts of Australia and the United States.
In 2022, New Zealand became the first country to ban cigarette sales to people born after 2008. But late last year, the country’s new conservative government announced it planned to scrap the measure.
In contrast, the UK’s new Labour government has been supportive of former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak’s plan to ban cigarette sales to anyone born after January 2009.
The authors of the IARC study nevertheless stressed that tobacco-free generation policies were not enough to tackle the health scourge of tobacco, particularly for current smokers.
They also called for proven measures such as increasing taxes on cigarettes, and more smoke-free environments as well as support for efforts to quit.
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