Cancer and ex-smokers

More ex-smokers like newscaster Peter Jennings are developing lung cancer -- but that's not necessarily a surprise, the Wall Street Journal notes:

The rising proportion of nonsmokers among lung-cancer victims merely reflects the growth in the legions of Americans who have freed themselves from a powerful addiction.

With significant declines in the smoking rate -- for example, 25% of men in this country smoke today, compared with 57% 50 years ago -- there are now more former smokers than current ones, says Michael Thun, who heads epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society in Atlanta. In all, former and current smokers will account for about 87% of the anticipated 163,500 deaths this year from lung cancer, which kills more Americans than any other kind of cancer, according to the cancer society.

New research is suggesting that those who quit early enough have little reason to worry. A 50-year study of cigarette-addicted British doctors published last summer in the British Medical Journal found that on average smokers lived 10 fewer years than nonsmokers. The study also found that those who quit smoking at age 30 or younger had roughly the same life expectancy as people who never smoked.