Preventable Disease
2020 is by all accounts a terrible year. Six months after the world became aware of the virus over 500,000 people have died, in many cases horrible deaths away from their loved ones.
Public policy has been turned on its head, humans have modified their behaviours in a way that has no equivalent in human history.
This is a visible disease and has scared the crap out of everyone with half a brain. The impact is immediate and the evidence all around us.
Yet, the numbers impacted by the Coronavirus pales into insignificance when compared to the number of deaths, EVERY YEAR, caused by smoking and other lifestyle choices. This is the curiosity of the human mind. The immediate threat is always overemphasised and future threats are minimised.
We urge you to treat the future implications of your lifestyle choices as if they are current and take action so you don't become part of the statistics.
Public policy has been turned on its head, humans have modified their behaviours in a way that has no equivalent in human history.
This is a visible disease and has scared the crap out of everyone with half a brain. The impact is immediate and the evidence all around us.
Yet, the numbers impacted by the Coronavirus pales into insignificance when compared to the number of deaths, EVERY YEAR, caused by smoking and other lifestyle choices. This is the curiosity of the human mind. The immediate threat is always overemphasised and future threats are minimised.
We urge you to treat the future implications of your lifestyle choices as if they are current and take action so you don't become part of the statistics.
Annual Deaths in Millions (2018)
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Smoking
- 25% of all cancer deaths are attributed to tobacco use
- Smoking causes 87% of lung cancer deaths in men and 70% of lung cancer deaths in women
- Causes cancer of the liver, colon and rectum, lung, oral cavity and throat, oesophagus, larynx (voicebox), stomach, pancreas, bladder, kidney, and cervix, and acute myeloid leukaemia
Alcohol
- 3% of all cancers; c. 13,000 cases every year in the UK
- More than 1 in 20 cancer cases in the UK are linked to being overweight or obese
- Cancers of the breast (in women after the menopause), bowel, womb, oesophageal (food pipe), pancreatic, kidney, liver, upper stomach (gastric cardia), gallbladder, ovarian, thyroid, myeloma (a type of blood cancer), and meningioma (a type of brain tumour)
A large percentage of NCDs are preventable through the reduction of their four main behavioural risk factors: tobacco use, physical inactivity, harmful use of alcohol and unhealthy diet.
Executive summary - World Health Organization
Tobacco is the only legal drug that kills many of its users when used exactly as intended by manufacturers
One Billion Smokers, Worldwide (2014, WHO)
16,000,000,000 cigarettes smoked every day (2014)
Heroin addicts say "it is easier to give up dope than it is to give up smoking'' Dr. Sharon Hall, a psychology professor at the University of California's San Francisco medical school
Cigarette smoking is responsible for as much as US$170 billion in annual health care spending in the US. Medicare, Medicaid and other government sponsored (CDC, 2013)