Dam. I knew there was a difference. But never would have expected it to be this big
That’s truly a fascinating number. I’ve never smoked and I certainly don’t plan to start doing it, but this is really telling. Like I knew that smoking caused lung cancer, but it’s like not just a slight link, it’s truly damning of how smoking has been tolerated for far too long.
As a recent quitter, I found it useful to visualize this, as its something that is hard to grasp somehow. Do note some metrics differ per source, so I had to take the middle of the range sometimes. Its a rough estimate, which differs by geographic region, gender and smoking frequency among other factors.
So if I never quit smoking, I’ve got an 86% chance of not dying from lung cancer?
Awesome!
4 in 5 lifetime smokers never getting lung cancer seems way higher than I would have thought.
If you die at 33 from lung cancer and you are a smoker. Are you in the quit before 30 or never quit smoking?
Is every group on the left hand side composed of 1000 people each?
Would be interesting to see smoke frequency before quitting as well, to see the difference between 1 pack smokers vs 2 pack smokers for example
The most fascinating aspect of this imo is the fact that even though the chances of getting lung cancer increase. The mortality rate still is the same throughout all of them, around 75%.
I just quit in July and I turn 40 in Nov. this makes me feel pretty good.
I am not sure this is right. The normal line is that if you give up by 30ish you are basically in the same position as a non smoker. This is complex! There are lots of reasons why the above stats, which are demotivating, might not be shared.
With all the clear evidence and scientific consensus, the lobbying from tobacco firms to politicians and pushing their narratives through news are just absurdly effective that we wait for tens of years to communicate the message of smoking being bad clearly to public.
And looks like we never learn from this mistake too. Now, on different issues, it’s still lobbying and lobbying (i.e., bribes) and pushing misinformation through social media that leaves all of the human population at risk….
It would be interesting to add alcohol consumption into the data.
I quit at 30. I probably started a lot earlier than the average smoker.
What age does this stat use?
Never smoked cigarettes (apart from second hand), tho I smoked a fair amount of pot in my 20s–now 74.
Had my upper right lung lobe (plus bit more) removed 6 yrs ago–a tumor showed on xray and CT, turned out to be stage IA, and non-aggressive (it’d been there a while). Adjacent lymph nodes tested negative. I’m fine now. (fingers crossed)
What interesting observations I make from this:
• 100x larger chance to get lung cancer if you smoke, compared to never smoking (On the population scale). That’s a WAY bigger difference than I had anticipated.
• Even if you quit smoking early, you still have a 5x larger chance of catching lung cancer, compared to if you never smoked. That’s huge!
• No matter how much you’ve smoked (or not), there’s always a 75% chance of you dying from lung cancer, if you get it.
• The earlier you stop, the better the chance you have of not catching lung cancer – Otherwise the chance grows exponentially.
• A butt load of smokers get lung cancer, and the vast majority of them die from it. Stop smoking people!
Lung cancer is 75% fatal no matter how much or little you smoke. I didn’t think it was that high.
What about joints 1-2x a week
OP can you tag study source(s)? I’m curious of the methodology of this, bc an important factor in data like this would also be when someone begins. There’s more to be inferred if all people tested here began at roughly the same young age (like 18 or earlier), vs if all smokers only (contextual term) smoked for say 10 years.
I’m club “Quit before 40”. Like to see it in numbers.
I’m having a hard time seeing these numbers as accurate. Are these numbers for primary lung cancers? The lungs, liver, and brain see a high proportion of metastasis from other cancers. Of the patients I’ve treated, a very small fraction of them had primary lung cancer, compared to mets from other cancers. I’ve seen many times more people die of lung cancer, who were never smokers, than smokers die of lung cancer.
COPD, and vascular issues are much more common and expected complications from smoking.
I wonder how the data is normalized, since it will be very different for people who live in a city where pm2.5 pollution never goes down below 400ppm and for people who live somewhere where it doesn’t go above 10 ppm, and any other pollutants.
For example in my country, it would be around 0.65 in 1000 without regard for smoking, which is less than this shows for non-smokers.
Scary to see it this way. 5 months free at 35, hopefully I don’t contribute to one of those bars.
Lost my dad to it a few months ago, he only stopped after the diagnosis, but the damage was already done.
Don’t ever smoke and try to let your loved ones of this harsh reality
If you’ve seen a smoker’s lung versus a nonsmokers lung, it’s a huge difference.
I would like to see a graph where people start smoking from a certain age and the correlation with lung cancer.
Eh. Can I start at 40, what are my chances?
What happens if I start at 40?
Heart disease and stroke is the biggest risk/issue, it’s just harder to prove smoking was the main culprit
also the longer you go without smoking the more the lung cancer risks decrease. after 10 years risks are significantly diminished. it’s so interesting, and we still don’t fully understand every mechanism behind how lung cancer is caused by cigarettes
Good to keep in mind that even though cancer and mortality don’t affect everyone who smokes, the quality of life of the people who smoke due to COPD and increased vulnerability of infection is drastically less. Please stop smoking while you can!
those survival numbers suck.
if you get lung cancer, it has a 75% chance of killing you.
its a brutal disease.
fuck I curse my teenage self for being so goddam stupid to start and the next 25 years of me for being so weak as to not be able to quit.
I finally quit the bastard things 10 years ago but goddam the amount of money and potential lifetime lost to them is such a waste.
I wonder how much the healthy choices bias impacts these numbers too.
Population? Geography? Year? A LOT is missing
I only vape weed a lil bit every night I’m good right???
My mom died of lung cancer at 62. She had quit several times before that but always went back on the cigs. She battled it for 8 years.
My father died at 67, my mother 88 and my sister at 59. All smoking related issues. My mom had three heart attacks and dementia. After the last heart attack, she forgot she smoked. I rarely see people smoke, but when I do I want to smack them on the back of the head.
![How many people still die of lung cancer after quitting smoking by age [OC]](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/jhk7oz93ymxf1-1080x1024.jpeg)
36 comments
Dam. I knew there was a difference. But never would have expected it to be this big
That’s truly a fascinating number. I’ve never smoked and I certainly don’t plan to start doing it, but this is really telling. Like I knew that smoking caused lung cancer, but it’s like not just a slight link, it’s truly damning of how smoking has been tolerated for far too long.
As a recent quitter, I found it useful to visualize this, as its something that is hard to grasp somehow. Do note some metrics differ per source, so I had to take the middle of the range sometimes. Its a rough estimate, which differs by geographic region, gender and smoking frequency among other factors.
Sources used (through ChatGPT):
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2409903/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8417597_The_cumulative_risk_of_lung_cancer_among_current_ex-_and_never-smokers_in_European_men
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/lung-cancer/survival#:~:text=Your%20outlook%20depends%20on%20the,More%20statistics
Tool I used for the charting: https://www.draxlr.com/tools/bar-chart-generator/
.
Nice!
I’d prefer % instead of **‰**
So if I never quit smoking, I’ve got an 86% chance of not dying from lung cancer?
Awesome!
4 in 5 lifetime smokers never getting lung cancer seems way higher than I would have thought.
If you die at 33 from lung cancer and you are a smoker. Are you in the quit before 30 or never quit smoking?
Is every group on the left hand side composed of 1000 people each?
Would be interesting to see smoke frequency before quitting as well, to see the difference between 1 pack smokers vs 2 pack smokers for example
The most fascinating aspect of this imo is the fact that even though the chances of getting lung cancer increase. The mortality rate still is the same throughout all of them, around 75%.
I just quit in July and I turn 40 in Nov. this makes me feel pretty good.
I am not sure this is right. The normal line is that if you give up by 30ish you are basically in the same position as a non smoker. This is complex! There are lots of reasons why the above stats, which are demotivating, might not be shared.
With all the clear evidence and scientific consensus, the lobbying from tobacco firms to politicians and pushing their narratives through news are just absurdly effective that we wait for tens of years to communicate the message of smoking being bad clearly to public.
And looks like we never learn from this mistake too. Now, on different issues, it’s still lobbying and lobbying (i.e., bribes) and pushing misinformation through social media that leaves all of the human population at risk….
It would be interesting to add alcohol consumption into the data.
I quit at 30. I probably started a lot earlier than the average smoker.
What age does this stat use?
Never smoked cigarettes (apart from second hand), tho I smoked a fair amount of pot in my 20s–now 74.
Had my upper right lung lobe (plus bit more) removed 6 yrs ago–a tumor showed on xray and CT, turned out to be stage IA, and non-aggressive (it’d been there a while). Adjacent lymph nodes tested negative. I’m fine now. (fingers crossed)
What interesting observations I make from this:
• 100x larger chance to get lung cancer if you smoke, compared to never smoking (On the population scale). That’s a WAY bigger difference than I had anticipated.
• Even if you quit smoking early, you still have a 5x larger chance of catching lung cancer, compared to if you never smoked. That’s huge!
• No matter how much you’ve smoked (or not), there’s always a 75% chance of you dying from lung cancer, if you get it.
• The earlier you stop, the better the chance you have of not catching lung cancer – Otherwise the chance grows exponentially.
• A butt load of smokers get lung cancer, and the vast majority of them die from it. Stop smoking people!
Lung cancer is 75% fatal no matter how much or little you smoke. I didn’t think it was that high.
What about joints 1-2x a week
OP can you tag study source(s)? I’m curious of the methodology of this, bc an important factor in data like this would also be when someone begins. There’s more to be inferred if all people tested here began at roughly the same young age (like 18 or earlier), vs if all smokers only (contextual term) smoked for say 10 years.
I’m club “Quit before 40”. Like to see it in numbers.
I’m having a hard time seeing these numbers as accurate. Are these numbers for primary lung cancers? The lungs, liver, and brain see a high proportion of metastasis from other cancers. Of the patients I’ve treated, a very small fraction of them had primary lung cancer, compared to mets from other cancers. I’ve seen many times more people die of lung cancer, who were never smokers, than smokers die of lung cancer.
COPD, and vascular issues are much more common and expected complications from smoking.
I wonder how the data is normalized, since it will be very different for people who live in a city where pm2.5 pollution never goes down below 400ppm and for people who live somewhere where it doesn’t go above 10 ppm, and any other pollutants.
For example in my country, it would be around 0.65 in 1000 without regard for smoking, which is less than this shows for non-smokers.
Scary to see it this way. 5 months free at 35, hopefully I don’t contribute to one of those bars.
Lost my dad to it a few months ago, he only stopped after the diagnosis, but the damage was already done.
Don’t ever smoke and try to let your loved ones of this harsh reality
If you’ve seen a smoker’s lung versus a nonsmokers lung, it’s a huge difference.
I would like to see a graph where people start smoking from a certain age and the correlation with lung cancer.
Eh. Can I start at 40, what are my chances?
What happens if I start at 40?
Heart disease and stroke is the biggest risk/issue, it’s just harder to prove smoking was the main culprit
also the longer you go without smoking the more the lung cancer risks decrease. after 10 years risks are significantly diminished. it’s so interesting, and we still don’t fully understand every mechanism behind how lung cancer is caused by cigarettes
Good to keep in mind that even though cancer and mortality don’t affect everyone who smokes, the quality of life of the people who smoke due to COPD and increased vulnerability of infection is drastically less. Please stop smoking while you can!
those survival numbers suck.
if you get lung cancer, it has a 75% chance of killing you.
its a brutal disease.
fuck I curse my teenage self for being so goddam stupid to start and the next 25 years of me for being so weak as to not be able to quit.
I finally quit the bastard things 10 years ago but goddam the amount of money and potential lifetime lost to them is such a waste.
I wonder how much the healthy choices bias impacts these numbers too.
Population? Geography? Year? A LOT is missing
I only vape weed a lil bit every night I’m good right???
My mom died of lung cancer at 62. She had quit several times before that but always went back on the cigs. She battled it for 8 years.
My father died at 67, my mother 88 and my sister at 59. All smoking related issues. My mom had three heart attacks and dementia. After the last heart attack, she forgot she smoked. I rarely see people smoke, but when I do I want to smack them on the back of the head.
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