
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 10, 1995                   TAG: 9509110166
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-15   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Newsday
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SMOKER DEATH RATE UP DESPITE 'SAFER' PRODUCT

Despite tobacco industry claims of making ``safer'' cigarettes, the rate of lung cancer deaths among smokers has increased dramatically during the past three decades - particularly among women, a new study shows.

Even with the widespread introduction of filter-tipped, lower tar cigarettes, the rate of lung cancer deaths increased 500 percent among women smokers and doubled among male smokers, according to a large-scale study of smoking published in today's American Journal of Public Health.

``This is an invisible epidemic, and the toll in human lives just continues,'' says one of the study's main authors, Dr. Michael J. Thun, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society. ``This shows how this epidemic has evolved since the 1960s.''

The study, which examined death rates among more than 200,000 people who were smokers during the early 1960s and during the mid-1980s and 480,000 nonsmokers, found that lung-cancer deaths in the United States are ``largely confined to smokers.'' It also underlines that almost half of all deaths among smokers, who currently number 46 million in the United States, are attributable to cigarettes.

In explaining the dramatic increase in lung cancer death rates, the researchers suggest that current smokers may be ``more addicted,'' inhale more deeply, take more puffs per cigarette, and ``cannot quit despite health and social concerns.''

The study reported that smokers are starting the habit at an earlier age in adolescence, and the figures showed that women have virtually caught up to men in death rates attributed to cigarette smoking.

``The putative benefits of `safer' cigarettes among older smokers have been apparently overwhelmed by more potent adverse changes in smoking behavior,'' the study concluded.

The study did provide some good news, however, regarding coronary heart disease - which once killed more smokers than did cancer. According to the study, death rates from stroke and coronary heart disease dropped more than 50 percent among both the smoking and nonsmoking groups since the early 1960s.

Keywords:
FATALITY

by CNB