Smoking a single cigarette could shorten your life expectancy by 20 minutes, a new study has found.
This figure marks a significant increase from previous estimates, which instead suggested a cigarette shortens a smoker’s life by 11 minutes.
Carried out by researchers at University College London (UCL) and commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care, the research suggests that a typical pack of 20 cigarettes can shorten a person’s life by nearly seven hours.
The average man loses 17 minutes of life with every cigarette they smoke, say the findings, while a woman’s life is cut short by 22 minutes.
Preventing loss of life
According to the study, if a smoker getting through 10 cigarettes a day quits on 1 January, they could prevent the loss of a full day of life by 8 January.
Life expectancy would increase by a week if they quit until 5 February – moving up to a whole month if they stop until 5 August. By the end of the year, they could have increased their life expectancy by 50 days.
Dr Sarah Jackson is a principal research fellow at UCL’s alcohol and tobacco research group. She said: ‘It is vital that people understand just how harmful smoking is and how much quitting can improve their health and life expectancy.
‘The evidence suggests people lose, on average, around 20 minutes of life for each cigarette they smoke. The sooner a person stops smoking, the longer they live. Quitting at any age substantially improves health and the benefits start almost immediately.
‘It’s never too late to make a positive change for your health and there are a range of effective products and treatments that can help smokers quit for good.’
Smoking statistics
Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death, disability and ill health in the UK. It causes around 80,000 deaths a year in the UK and one in four of all cancer deaths in England. It also kills up to two thirds of long-term users.
The authors added: ‘Studies suggest that smokers typically lose about the same number of healthy years as they do total years of life.
‘Thus smoking primarily eats into the relatively healthy middle years rather than shortening the period at the end of life, which is often marked by chronic illness or disability.
‘So a 60-year-old smoker will typically have the health profile of a 70-year-old non-smoker.’
Separate new research conducted by Censuswide shows more than half (53%) of smokers are planning on quitting smoking as a new year’s resolution in 2025.
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