A new study suggests tobacco control policies may have differing results throughout the United States. For the study, researchers compared lung cancer death rates among women by year of birth. Results showed that while lung cancer death rates declined continuously by birth year for women born after the 1950s in California, rates in other states declined less quickly or even increased.
Prior to the 1960s and 1970s, lung cancer death rates had been decreasing among young and middle-aged white women in the United States. However, the rates abruptly leveled off during these decades, reflecting an increase in smoking among girls. In light of the considerable variations in state tobacco control policies, researchers sought to determine whether this harmful trend differed across states. Ahmedin Jemal, PhD, and his team analyzed lung cancer death rates from 23 states for which there was adequate data. Using the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) mortality database, researchers studied rates from 1973 through 2007 of white women according to age.
According to the study, published early online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, in all age groups younger than 75, age-specific lung cancer death rates continuously decreased in California beginning in the 1990s. Moreover, declines began earlier for Californians in younger age groups. The age-specific trends in New York were largely parallel to those in California except the reductions were less extreme. In contrast, rates in Alabama continued to increase for those aged 70 years or older. For the young and middle-aged women of Alabama, rates decreased for a short time, but they are now increasing, especially among women younger than 50 years.
The lung cancer death rate for women in California born after 1950 is less than a third of the rate among those born in 1933. Conversely, in Alabama, the death rate among women born after 1950 is more than double that of women born in 1933. These increasing rates in women born after the 1950s were found in other southern states, including Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
“The dramatic rise in lung cancer death rates in young and middle-aged white women in several Southern states points to a lack of effective policies or interventions, like excise taxes and comprehensive smoke-free laws, that deter initiation of smoking among teenagers and promote smoking cessation among adults,” said Ahmedin Jemal, PhD, American Cancer Society vice president of surveillance research. “Our findings underscore the need for additional interventions to promote smoking cessation in these high-risk populations, which could lead to more favorable future mortality trends for lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases.”
Source: ACS.