Townsend J
MRC Epidemiology and Medical Care Unit, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Medical College of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, UK.
Addiction. 1993 Jan;88(1):37-46. doi: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1993.tb02762.x.
Britain still has amongst the highest mortality rates in the world for all the major smoking diseases. A third of all adults smoke cigarettes regularly and smoking causes one third of UK deaths in middle age. This paper discusses factors related to changes in smoking levels and concludes that without the intervention of government policies, smoking prevalence and the amount smoked per smoker is likely to rise, particularly for young people. Measures to reduce smoking are surveyed and estimates made of the maximum likely effects from health education, advertising control, general practitioner smoking cessation advice and public and work place policies. A pricing policy is suggested which, with the other policies could reduce cigarette consumption by a half so that only one in five adults smoke by the year 2000. Predictions are made of the effect of this policy package on lives and life years saved. Within twenty five years there would be 50,000 fewer deaths from smoking and half a million life years saved annually. This would rise to two thirds of a million within forty years. Deaths from lung cancer would fall by 38%. The quality of these life years saved would tend to the average for their age.
在所有主要的吸烟相关疾病方面，英国的死亡率仍位居世界前列。三分之一的成年人经常吸烟，吸烟导致英国三分之一的中年人死亡。本文讨论了与吸烟水平变化相关的因素，并得出结论：如果没有政府政策的干预，吸烟率以及每个吸烟者的吸烟量可能会上升，尤其是在年轻人当中。文中调查了减少吸烟的措施，并对健康教育、广告管控、全科医生戒烟建议以及公共和工作场所政策可能产生的最大效果进行了估算。建议实施一项定价政策，该政策与其他政策一起，可使香烟消费量减少一半，从而到2000年时只有五分之一的成年人吸烟。文中预测了这一政策组合对挽救生命和生命年数的影响。在25年内，吸烟导致的死亡人数将减少5万，每年可挽救50万个生命年。到40年内，这一数字将增至60万。肺癌死亡人数将下降38%。这些被挽救的生命年的质量将趋向于其年龄段的平均水平。
