Hundreds of thousands of patients and tens of thousands deaths nationwide every year – smoking is one of the greatest health risk factors. The corona pandemic has exacerbated the problem. But the future could look better.
Wiesbaden (dpa) – Fewer and fewer people smoke in Germany, but the consumers of earlier years get the receipt today: The number of patients with respiratory tumors or lung damage is increasing, as the Federal Statistical Office reported on Friday.
Health organizations are calling for more political commitment on World No Tobacco Day on Monday. A tobacco-free Germany by 2040 is “not a utopia”.
First the good news: per capita tobacco consumption in Germany is falling. For example, while in 2011 every adult consumed an average of 1305 cigarettes, according to preliminary figures it was 1063 in 2020 – a decrease of 19 percent, as the Wiesbaden statisticians calculated. But according to the 2017 microcensus, a good every fourth man (26 percent) and almost every fifth woman (19 percent) still smokes.
A look at the hospitals shows a bad picture: According to the Federal Statistical Office, a total of 458,000 people in Germany were hospitalized for a smoker-specific illness in 2019. That was 18 percent more than in 2010. 211,300 cases were due to lung and bronchial, larynx or trachea cancer, and 246,700 to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
According to statistics, almost 77,600 people in Germany died in 2019 as a result of illnesses associated with smoking. Lung and bronchial cancer was the third most common cause of death with around 45,000 deaths, and COPD the sixth most common with more than 31,000 deaths.
Fewer smokers, more damage to health – what at first glance looks like a contradiction in terms is just a delay: “The increase in hospital stays due to tobacco smoke can be traced back to the smoking behavior of the last few decades,” explains Martina Pötschke-Langer, CEO of the Non-Smoking Alliance. A generation of long-time smokers experience “today the receipt for their consumption”.
With the corona pandemic, another risk has arisen, as the German Society for Pneumology and Respiratory Medicine (DPG) points out: It is unclear whether smokers are more easily infected with the corona virus – but severe or even fatal courses are clearly more common. According to the seven most recent meta-analyzes, tobacco smoking increases the risk of serious disease progression; the risk of dying from the infection is one-third to one-half higher for smokers.
From the pulmonologist’s point of view, e-cigarettes are not a good alternative: The health risk from e-cigarettes is high because toxins such as lead and chromium could be absorbed into the lungs and blood, warns the DPG. The large number of added substances and flavors make quality control hardly possible. In addition, many smokers who switched to e-cigarettes continued to use tobacco. The same restrictions and tax rules should therefore apply to e-cigarettes as to tobacco cigarettes, demands the DPG.
Michael Baumann, chairman of the board of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), criticizes Germany at the bottom of Europe when it comes to tobacco control: “Politicians have to make a clear commitment to curbing tobacco consumption and thus protecting the health of the population.” For the World Health Organization (WHO), Germany is even one of the “problem children” worldwide, as the WHO Director for Health Promotion, Rüdiger Krech, says. Tobacco taxes urgently need to be increased. Outdoor advertising that is still permitted must be banned and cigarette sales in supermarkets must be stopped.
Together with more than 50 other health organizations, the DKFZ has presented a “Strategy for a Tobacco-Free Germany 2040”. Specifically, less than five percent of adults and less than two percent of young people should consume tobacco products or e-cigarettes in 20 years’ time. The authors are convinced: “This is not a utopia” and make specific suggestions as to how this could be achieved – with advertising bans and uniform packaging, restricted availability and tax increases, better information and free offers of help.
Seen globally, the situation does not look any better: The number of tobacco consumers is increasing, there are 1.1 billion users worldwide, as an analysis presented on Friday in the specialist magazine “The Lancet” shows. In 2019, this resulted in around 7.7 million deaths. The authors evaluated more than 3500 individual studies from over 200 countries. “Smoking is one of the greatest health risk factors, but tobacco control is pathetically inadequate in many countries,” criticized Emmanuela Gakidou of the University of Seattle (Washington State) in The Lancet.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210530-99-794841 / 4
Destatis smoking statistics
German Society for Pneumology and Respiratory Medicine
Strategy 2040
Artikel in The Lancet
German Cancer Research Center
Tabakatlas 2020
Action alliance for non-smoking
