The world’s most populous country might just see one in three of its young men get killed by smoking, warned a new study.

New research in The Lancet found that two-thirds of young males in China begin to smoke mostly before they reach age 20. About half of early smokers will eventually perish from tobacco use, unless they quit the habit for good.

The study was helmed by scientists from University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Chinese Center for Disease Control.

"About two-thirds of young Chinese men become cigarette smokers, and most start before they are 20,” said Zhengming Chen, study co-author and professor from University of Oxford, warning that half of them will be eventually killed by smoking unless they stop.

Liming Li, study co-author and professor at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, warned of potentially “enormous numbers of premature deaths” if China will not implement “rapid, committed, and widespread action to reduce smoking levels.”

The team conducted two national studies 15 years apart to track smoking’s health effects in a large group of Chinese people: first in the 1990s involving 250,000 men, and second as an ongoing study involving 500,000 men and women.

In 2010, the annual number of deaths from tobacco – mostly among Chinese men – had reached a million, with a predicted 2 million deaths by 2030 based on current trends. On the other hand, the numbers have declined among women, with their risk of premature death from smoking “low and falling.”

Rural China’s numbers remain lower than in cities but is estimated to increase even more steeply due to high smoking prevalence and low cessation rate in such areas.

Findings, however, also showed that the number of smokers who had quit increased from 3 to 9 percent between 1991 and 2006. Those who quit before acquiring a serious illness had, after 10 years, health risks that were similar to those who had never touched a cigarette stick.

Cigarettes have become easily accessible in recent decades in China. Tobacco is an important revenue source for the Chinese government, thus making it difficult to crack down on it widespread use.

Tobacco kills up to half of its users worldwide, with the World Health Organization (WHO) recording over 5 million deaths annually from direct tobacco use.

Photo: Chuck Grimmett | Flickr