Smoking Killed 7.69M People Worldwide In 2019

About 7.69 million people worldwide, including some 200,000 in Japan, died in 2019 from a variety of smoking-related diseases, an estimate by an international team of experts showed earlier this year, Kyodo News reported.

Photo Insert: Despite the known health risks caused by smoking, an alarming number of people cannot seem to kick the habit.

China accounted for the largest number of deaths with about 2.42 million, nearly 30 percent of the world total, followed by India at 1.01 million, the United States at 530,000, Russia at 290,000, and Indonesia, at 250,000, according to the estimate published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

Japan's death toll was the sixth highest in the study, which analyzed data from over 3,000 health surveys covering more than 200 countries and regions. The team found the number of smokers in the world topped 1.1 billion in 2019, with 7 trillion cigarettes consumed annually.

Although smoking rates are on a downward trend in developed countries, the number of smokers is on the rise in developing countries including those in Africa, where the population is growing rapidly.

The most common diseases that directly caused deaths among smokers were ischemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and strokes. Smoking is known to increase the risk of developing these diseases.

The estimate does not include the health damage caused by secondhand smoke.

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