The rising medical costs linked to tobacco-related illnesses and deaths, along with the aging of the Chinese population, may cripple the China's social security system in just two decades, an official warned on Thursday, Xinhua reported.

Tobacco-linked deaths have been on the rise over the past decade and are expected to reach a peak between 2025 and 2030, a time when China is set to overtake Japan as the world's most aged society, said Liang Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The combination of the two will put a severe strain the country's social security system, Liang said.

According to research by Hu Angang, a professor at Tsinghua University, health care and other smoking-related costs exceeded the tobacco industry's economic gains by 61.8 billion yuan in 2010.

Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of death in the world. It kills nearly six million people worldwide each year, including over 600,000 who die from exposure to second-hand smoke.

In China, it kills over one million people each year, where nearly 30 percent of adults, or more than 300 million, smoke. Another 740 million people are exposed to second-hand smoke annually.

(China.org.cn July 14, 2012)

据新华社报道，一名官员本周四警告称，由烟草引发的疾病和死亡带来的医疗费用越来越高，随着中国人口老龄化加剧，只需20年我国的社会保障体系就有可能被拖垮。

中国疾病预防控制中心副主任梁晓峰表示，过去十年间，烟草引发的死亡人数一直在增多，并有望在2025至2030年间达到一个高峰，那时中国将超越日本成为世界上老龄化最为严重的国家。

梁晓峰说，两个因素加在一起将严重影响我国的社会保障体系。

据清华大学胡鞍钢教授所做的一份研究显示，2010年医疗花费和其它吸烟相关的花费超过烟草业经济收入618亿元。

吸烟是世界上主要的可预防死因之一。每年，烟草在全世界夺去近600万人的生命，其中60多万人是死于吸二手烟。

在中国，近30%的成年人，也就是超过3亿成年人吸烟，每年因此死亡的人数超过100万。另外，每年还有7.4亿人生活在二手烟的环境中。