Letter: Rewards of quitting

Richard Peto
Friday 16 January 1998 00:02 GMT
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Sir: Your report (14 January) on the risks that remain after smokers quit should have made it clear that the risks if they don't quit are very much bigger.

Although about half of all persistent smokers eventually get killed by their habit, stopping smoking works - smokers who stop before they have incurable cancer, or some other serious disease, do avoid most of their risk of eventually being killed by tobacco.

In the first decade of the new millennium there will be about a million British deaths from smoking, and the only way to cut that number substantially is for lots of adult smokers to decide that for them the benefits of stopping are worth the effort.

Professor RICHARD PETO

Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine

University of Oxford

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