Australia is a world leader in tobacco control and currently has one of the lowest rates of smoking in the world. Reliable quantitative evidence on the relationship of tobacco smoking to mortality in Australia has not been previously available, and has the potential to contribute to what is known internationally about the contemporary risks of smoking.

Professor Emily Banks presents data on the smoking epidemic, and its health consequences, internationally. It will provide details of a large-scale prospective cohort study involving 204,953 individuals aged 45 years and over from the general population of New South Wales: the 45 and Up Study.

This study found that current smokers were three times more likely to die during the 4 year follow-up period than people who had never smoked. Smokers are estimated to die an average of 10 years earlier than non-smokers and up to two-thirds of deaths in current smokers can be attributed to smoking. These findings show that the harms of smoking in Australia, and the benefits of quitting, are substantially greater than previously thought.