Smoking decreased by 13% in the world at the beginning of the pandemic

Smoking decreased by 13% in the world at the beginning of the pandemic, a trend that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) considers should be used to reinforce measures aimed at abandoning a particularly harmful consumption to health.

The IARC collects this Tuesday in a statement a study from the Daffodil Center, a consortium between the University of Sydney with the Cancer Council NSW of Australia, which compares the percentage of smokers in the first phase of the pandemic in 2020 with previous years.

The research is based on the review of 31 scientific articles with information on the behavior of smokers based on the testimony of 269,164 participants from 24 countries.

The researchers estimated that the proportion of smokers fell during the coronavirus epidemic, although the changes in smoking behaviors varied widely.

“The covid pandemic has had a profound impact on the mental and physical health of individuals and this can lead to substantial changes in behaviors that, if not addressed in time, will have long-term health consequences,” noted the study’s lead author, Peter Sarich.

The study did not identify sufficient elements to evaluate the behavior of smokers by population subgroups (for example, according to socioeconomic level) that could give clues about the most adapted prevention strategies.

That is why the UN agency insists that this should be a point of interest for ongoing and future investigations.

His deputy head of the IARC cancer surveillance branch and also an author of the work, Isabelle Soerjomataram, said that smoking control measures and services to break the habit should be strengthened.

“This is about allowing those who have cut down or stopped smoking during the pandemic to maintain those positive behavioral changes and targeting those who have increased their tobacco use to ensure that covid does not exacerbate the tobacco pandemic”Soerjomataram added.

The IARC recalls that tobacco use remains the leading cause of premature death in the world and that in 2019 it was responsible for 8.71 million deaths, 15.4% of the total, largely due to diseases such as cancer. .