UNBC’s Northern Medical Program (NMP) has issued a new study conducting tobacco-related illnesses that were responsible for a large number of deaths linked to alcohol and drug-use disorders.
NMP Associate Professor Dr. Russ Callaghan and his research team studied hospital and death records in California between 1990 and 2005 and came across some interesting findings.
“What I found was approximately 40 to 50% of all the deaths that occurred in these populations were tobacco-related so they were one of the 19 conditions we know of is caused by tobacco.”
Anyone hospitalized with either an alcohol or smoking disorder ran a higher risk of death from those 19 smoking-related conditions with one fatal condition much more common than others.
“Lung cancer is the most typical and then cardiovascular problems like heart attacks and stroke followed by the respiratory problems pneumonia, emphysema,” says Callaghan.
Callaghan adds the study was done for a simple reason. “It helps frame mortality rates in these populations, often times we focus on the acute harms like overdose and the acquisition of HIV but the broader scope of mortality is dominated by tobacco.”
The research study was published last month in the Drug and Alcohol Review.
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