AS many as two in every three Australian smokers will die from their addiction unless they quit, a stark new study suggests.

And anti-smoking campaigners in Tasmania — a state with one of the nation’s highest rates of tobacco use (21.7 per cent compared with the national average of 16.3 per cent) and where one in five adults still regularly light up — have described the results as “horrific”.

The new findings show cigarettes will claim the lives of 1.8 million of the country’s 2.7 million smokers.

Not only does the addiction shave a decade off their life, just 10 cigarettes a day doubles the risk of dying prematurely compared with nonsmokers.

The University of Melbourne and Sax Institute research, published in the journal BMC Medicine, is the first to provide large-scale evidence on smoking and mortality in Australia.

The study, analysing the health outcomes of more than 2000 people aged over 45, found up to two thirds of deaths in smokers could be attributed to tobacco products.

Death rates in smokers were around three times those of people who had never smoked.

SmokeFree Tasmania convener Kathryn Barnsley said the results were a wake-up call for community, health professionals and politicians in the state.

Ms Barnsley said it was just another reason tobacco use was finally stubbed out, saying that up to 40 per cent of Tasmanian men aged 18-35 were still smokers.

“This is a dramatic piece of research because until now we had been under the impression that it was half of all smokers who died from tobacco-related illnesses, and to learn that it is two thirds of smokers is quite terrifying,” Ms Barnsley said.

“There are still 35 per cent of pregnant women under the age of 20 that are smokers. That means that generation of children are exposed to all sorts of diseases, including sudden infant death syndrome and asthma.”

The study comes as Professor Jon Berrick, who developed the concept of a “tobacco-free generation”, prepares to arrive in the state tomorrow to brief politicians on MLC Ivan Dean’s Private Members Bill severely restricting the sale of cigarettes.

The legislation, to be debated in Parliament next month, would make it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born this century, from 2018.

Cancer Council Tasmania chief Penny Egan described the report as “horrific’’, saying lung cancer remained the biggest cause of death for men and women in Tasmania.

Originally published as Quit or die, smokers warned