New research has shown 2 out of every three smokers will die prematurely if they continue their habit

A NEW Australian study has some scary statistics on just how deadly one of our favourite bad habits is.

This Tuesday, July 15, 2014 photo shows the tobacco in cigarettes in Philadelphia. A study ties a host of new diseases to smoking, and says an additional 60,000 to 120,000 deaths each year in the United States are probably due to tobacco use. The study by the American Cancer Society and several universities is published in the Thursday, Feb 12, 2015 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. It looks beyond lung cancer, heart disease and other conditions already tied to smoking and adds breast cancer, prostate cancer and even routine infections to the list. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

IT’s highly publicised that smoking is not good for your health, but now science has been able to expose just how deadly the habit actually is.

An Australian study of more than 200,000 people has revealed the likelihood that two in every three smokers will die prematurely if they continue their habit.

This means out of country’s 2.7 million smokers, 1.8 million will die ahead of their time.

For the study, researchers collected data on people who were enrolled in the Sax Institutes 45 and Up Study — the largest longitudinal study of healthy ageing in the Southern Hemisphere — for a period of four years.

The study found the probability of dying from a smoking related illness increased with the number of cigarettes a person consumed each day.

Those who smoked fewer than 14 cigarettes a day were twice as likely to die earlier than those who don’t smoke, while those who smoked over 25 cigarettes a day were four times more likely.

Lead author Professor Emily Banks said the evidence confirms the disturbing findings that have been emerging internationally.

“Even with the very low rates of smoking that we have in Australia, we found that smokers have around threefold the risk of premature death of those who have never smoked,” she told Business Insider.

“We also found smokers will die an estimated 10 years earlier than nonsmokers.”

However, it’s not all doom and gloom.

The research found that those who quit the habit by the age of 45 appeared to eliminate most of the risks associated with the habit.

The study was published in the journal BMC Medicine.

Give up before you hit 45 and live 10 years longer. Picture: Matt Rourke