Stopping smoking

Tobacco causes 72 percent of UK lung cancer cases and about 86 percent of UK lung cancer deaths, so stopping is the one intervention that reaches most of the disease. The size of the benefit is measurable at every age. Of British men who smoke all their lives 15.9 percent die of lung cancer by age 75, against 9.9 percent of those who stop by 60, 6 percent by 50, 3 percent by 40 and 1.7 percent by 30; of women, 9.5 percent for lifelong smokers, 5.3 percent for stopping by 60 and 2.2 percent by 50. Risk is 43 percent lower about seven years after stopping and 72 percent lower about twelve years after, compared with continuing. Starting younger is worse in the other direction: lung cancer death risk rises 37 percent for each five years earlier that smoking began. NICE NG209 covers the whole of tobacco policy and practice, from preventing uptake in people aged 24 and under to treating dependence in everyone aged 12 and over, and was updated on 4 February 2025 to add recommendations on cytisinicline. Lung cancer screening is deliberately built around this: the UK National Screening Committee recommended targeted screening with integrated smoking cessation services, and the lung health check offers stop-smoking support at the same appointment, on the argument that the moment a person is assessed for lung cancer risk is the moment they are most likely to act. Stopping after a cancer diagnosis also matters, for treatment tolerance and second primaries as well as for survival.