Smoking prevalence and lung cancer mortality in Germany.

From investigations of smoking habits, which included information about onset of smoking, we have extrapolated gender- and age-specific smoking prevalence in Germany back to the 1920s. The exploration of these data, together with an analysis of lung cancer mortality by age-period-cohort models shows that the increase of smoking and lung cancer is modulated by factors related to the country-specific socio-economic environment and that it proceeds in waves. Though recent data indicate a decline in the prevalence of smoking among both sexes, Germany is now on the way to having a similar smoking-related cancer mortality to those countries in the world which previously had a much higher rate, but have intervened vigorously. The refusal in Germany to adopt actions such as those successfully implemented to save lives in these countries means that the German population is exposed to avoidable risks, whose effects can be counted in the terms of the thousands of lives that might have been saved each year.