Among the participants who had never smoked, the age-standardized rates of death from any cause were approximately 50% lower in the contemporary period than in the 1959–1965 period for both sexes (Tables 2 and 3). In contrast, there was no temporal decrease in the all-cause death rate among women who were current smokers (Table 2) and there was a 23.6% decrease among men who were current smokers (Table 3). Thus, the age-standardized relative risk for death from all causes among current smokers, as compared with those who had never smoked, increased across all three time periods, with a relative risk of 2.80 (95% CI, 2.72 to 2.88) for male smokers and 2.76 (95% CI, 2.69 to 2.84) for female smokers in the contemporary cohorts. The age-specific relative-risk estimates exceeded 3.00 for male current smokers who were 55 to 74 years of age and equaled or exceeded 3.00 for female current smokers who were 60 to 74 years of age (Table S2 in the Supplementary Appendix).
