Research published in the journal Tobacco Control has shown that deaths from smoking-related cancers are likely to rise by almost 50 per cent over the next two decades, reports Medical Xpress.

As research has shown that in the past, peaks in smoking-related deaths generally occur several decades after a peak in smoking prevalence has been recorded. The peak of smoking prevalence in China began around 20 years ago and so the peak in deaths from lung cancer is yet to happen, researchers say.
The researchers, who used information from the China Death Surveillance Database and surveys on smoking patterns in China, found that deaths from smoking-related cancers are likely to rise by 44 per cent for men and 53 per cent for women between 2020 and 2040, reports Medical Xpress. In numbers, this would mean 8.6 million deaths from smoking-related cancers or 117.3 million years of life lost.
Although, the smoking prevalence in China fell from 57.4 per cent to 50.5 per cent in men and from 2.6 per cent to 2.1 per cent in women between 2002 and 2018, The Healthy China initiative, which aims to improve the health of the Chinese population, says it is not enough.
"The observed rate of decrease in smoking prevalence is far from that required to meet the Healthy China 2030 goal," they write. "Even if this goal was achieved, the increasing trend in excess deaths would be reversed only slightly."