Women giving up smoking before 30 ‘evade dying risks’

PanARMENIAN.Net - Women who give up smoking by the age of 30 will almost completely evade the risks of dying young from tobacco-related diseases, according to a study of more than a million women in the UK, BBC News reported.

The results, published in the Lancet, showed lifelong smokers died a decade earlier than those who never started.

Those who stopped by 40 died a year younger and those who stopped by 30 lost, on average, a month of life.

Health experts said this was not a license for the young to smoke.

The study followed the first generation of women to start smoking during the 1950s and 60s. As women started smoking on a large scale much later than men, the impact of a lifetime of cigarettes has only just been analyzed for women.

"What we've shown is that if women smoke like men, they die like men," said lead researcher Prof Sir Richard Peto, from Oxford University.

He said: "More than half of women who smoke and keep on smoking will get killed by tobacco. Stopping works, amazingly well actually. Smoking kills, stopping works and the earlier you stop the better."

The records from 1.2 million women showed that even those who smoked fewer than 10 cigarettes a day were more likely to die sooner.

Sir Richard said that it was exactly the same picture as for men.

The British Lung Foundation said the prospects for long-term health were much better if people stopped smoking before they were 30, but cautioned that this was not a license to smoke "as much as you want in your 20s".