Researchers from the American Cancer Society say public education on this topic continues to save a total of around 4,000,000 lives.
New Research: This One Change Has Added Almost 80 Million Years to Americans’ Lives
Published on Apr. 28, 2025
Though the full health effects of vaping are still being discovered, health experts have warned of the dangers of cigarette smoking since around the 1920s. Because national data suggests that approximately 85% of lung cancer deaths are still attributable to cigarette smoking, the 1964 first-ever report from the U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health was a major turning point in the conversation linking smoking and cancer.
In the decades since, health officials have closely tracked the correlation. Now a March 2025 study published in the American Cancer Society’s journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, decided to examine just how many lives have potentially been saved thanks to the fading popularity of smoking.
The research team, comprised of seven researchers from the American Cancer Society and two additional researchers who specialize in the subject of tobacco control, used more than 50 years’ worth of mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics in their analysis. Though past studies have been done on lung cancer deaths, very few focused on estimating “the number of averted lung cancer deaths after declines in smoking and lung cancer mortality rates as markers of progress against smoking in the United States,” according to the study.
Previously, lung cancer deaths in men peaked in 1990, while women’s lung cancer deaths were at their highest in 2002. At present day, lung cancer deaths have dropped by 61% for men and 38% for women.
In the end, the study’s authors concluded 2,246,610 deaths in men and 1,609,630 deaths in women were avoided, for a total of 3,856,240 lung cancer deaths averted between 1970 and 2022.
Additionally, the study notes these numbers don’t include the impact on other possible cancer deaths, which is notable because “reductions in smoking reduce mortality from multiple other cancer types and noncancer conditions.”
There were other striking discoveries: Based on calculations, the research team estimated that a collective 76,275,550 years were gained—an average of 17.9 years in men and 22.4 in women.
Finally, “the number of averted lung cancer deaths accounted for 51.4% of the estimated declines in overall cancer deaths.”
Despite these encouraging findings, the study offers a strong caution: “Nevertheless, smoking-attributable morbidity and mortality from cancer or other conditions remain high, and mortality from lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the United States.” According to the National Cancer Institute, lung and bronchus cancer accounted for 20% of cancer deaths in 2024, taking a reported 125,070 lives.
For continued progress, the research team recommends stronger tobacco control commitments on local, state, and federal levels, as well as “substantially” raising the price of cigarettes through taxes paid by the consumer and “enhancing support for smoking cessation.”
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