Steve Winfrey grew up in a family of smokers.
His parents smoked and later quit. A grandfather smoked and so did several cousins.
For many years, Winfrey was a pack and a half - a week smoker. That is, until he watched his beloved grandfather die of throat cancer and Winfrey, himself, started developing breathing problems.
Smoking “was just dumb,” said the 57-year-old human resources executive, who hasn’t picked up a cigarette in more than a year. “I had remarried and had young children. I realized this was a pretty selfish act, knowing the consequences to me and to them. I could die or end up walking around with an oxygen tank.”
He didn’t want to become a statistic.
Indeed, the biggest drop - 50 percent - in the death rates for all cancers is among middle age African American men over a 20 year period, according to an annual report by the American Cancer Society that estimates the numbers of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States.
And that drop, says Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, is due in large part to number of black men who have either stopped smoking or never did.
“It’s overwhelmingly driven by a decline in lung cancer deaths,” Brawley said. “Those who stopped smoking more than 15 to 30 years ago are the ones who are not dying of smoking-related cancer today. ” Those cancers include lung, head and neck, esophageal and bladder cancer.
But some anti-smoking advocates are wary.
"It's good the lung cancer rates are declining, however it remains to be seen whether African American men are smoking less," said Delmonte Jefferson, executive director of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, which addresses tobacco-related and health disparities among African Americans."The tobacco industry has not stopped its predatory marketing to African American males."
He said some studies show tobacco use among African American and Latino youth is increasing.
“I think the jury is still out,” Jefferson said. Instead, he thinks the decline in cancer-related deaths may be due to black men going to the doctor earlier and not waiting until it’s too late.
The report was released as public health officials mark the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. Surgeon General’s report that raised the alarm about the links between smoking and health. A large percentage of Americans have quit smoking since then, thanks also to aggressive anti-smoking campaigns, the placement of warning labels on cigarettes, smoke-free workplaces and a ban on cigarette advertising on television,
The news is also bittersweet, said Brawley.
Despite the progress, black men continue to have the highest incidences of cancer and death rates among all ethnicities in the U.S.– nearly double those of Asian Americans, who have the lowest.
The higher incidence statistics are also heavily driven by bad diet, obesity and access to preventive care, Brawley said.
“We stress getting care for the person who is sick, when we should be getting care for people who are not sick,” Brawley said.”It’s a big U.S. versus European model. Almost all these numbers are better in Europe because their health systems are much more comprehensive and they stress preventing disease. In the U.S. we stress finding the disease and treating it.”
The report, “Cancer Statistics 2014,” also finds steady declines in cancer death rates for the past two decades, resulting in a 20 percent drop in the overall risk of dying from cancer during that period. The findings are based on data from the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
According to estimates, there will be 1,665,540 new cancer cases and 585,720 cancer deaths in the United States in 2014. Among men, prostate, lung, and colon cancer will account for about half of all newly diagnosed cancers. Among women, the three most common cancers in 2014 will be breast, lung, and colon. Breast cancer is expected to account for 29 percent of all new cancers among women.
Joe Jones Jr. has never picked up a pack of smokes.
He watched helplessly as one grandfather, a former North Carolina tobacco field worker, smoked his life away, eventually dying of lung cancer and other complications while in his 50s.
Jones, a 32-year-old digital strategist, was determined that would not happen to him.
“I never smoked and it was a direct correlation to the emotional loss of my grandfather,” said Jones of Roswell. “He definitely told us not to smoke and to take care of ourselves.”
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