Single cigarette takes 20 minutes off life expectancy, study finds

A single cigarette takes about 20 minutes on average off a person’s life, according to a survey conducted by some researchers at University College London.

As per the findings, a typical pack of 20 cigarettes can shorten a person’s life by nearly seven hours.

“If a smoker on 10 cigarettes a day quits on 1 January, they could prevent the loss of a full day of life by 8 January,” the Guardian said in a report on Monday.

“They could boost their life expectancy by a week if they quit until 5 February and a whole month if they stop until 5 August. By the end of the year, they could have avoided losing 50 days of life, the assessment found,” the report said.

“People generally know that smoking is harmful but tend to underestimate just how much,” said Dr Sarah Jackson, a principal research fellow at UCL’s alcohol and tobacco research group. “On average, smokers who don’t quit lose around a decade of life. That’s 10 years of precious time, life moments, and milestones with loved ones.”

The study, commissioned by the Department of Health, draws on the latest data from the British Doctors Study, which began in 1951 as one of the world’s first large studies into the effects of smoking, and the Million Women Study, which has tracked women’s health since 1996.