Control of tobacco-related disease.

Abstract

As ways of discouraging tobacco consumption, the effects of increases in price and in quantitative information may have been under-emphasized. To decrease the hazards of tobacco, switches from cigarettes to pipes, cigars or 'smokeless' tobacco may be useful, as may a reduction in cigarette tar delivery. Indeed, the spread of existing tar level reductions from capitalist to socialist countries might prevent tens of thousands of lung cancer deaths each year in the early decades of the next century, and (perhaps by attempts to engineer cigarettes so that smokers of lower tar cigarettes are less likely to 'compensate' by taking more smoke) it should eventually also be possible to change cigarettes so as also to reduce their effects on heart and lung disease. Changes in consumption and in composition of tobacco products are complementary, not competing, strategies. If both are pursued effectively, then although the life expectancy of old people may not be much improved, the proportion of adults who die before reaching old age will decrease substantially.