The number of new cancer cases and deaths are falling for both men and women for the first time since the government began compiling long-term trends, researchers said yesterday.

Overall cancer death rates decreased an average of 1.8 percent a year from 2002 to 2005, the report shows. Death rates have been falling since the government began tracking this trend in 1998.

Researchers say they were particularly encouraged that the number of new cases also fell, by an average of 0.8 percent a year, from 1999 to 2005.

There was good and bad news for Hawai'i: the state had the second-lowest rate of lung cancer in the nation, 36.8 cases per 100,000 residents. The national rate was 54.1, but Utah had the lowest rate at 24.4.

But Hawai'i was one of only four states in which the incidence of lung cancer in men increased from 1996 through 2005 (incidence trends could be measured in only 28 states).

Those overall national trends mark a change from the past, in which the cancer rate fell in men, but rose or held steady in women, as female smokers and former smokers succumbed to lung cancer. From 1995 to 1999, the overall number of new cases in both sexes grew by 0.9 percent a year.

Declining cancer rates are particularly impressive, given that the nation is aging, says John Niederhuber, director of the National Cancer Institute, one of the report's four sponsors.

Lung cancer incidence rates in men decreased from 1996 through 2005 in all but four (Nebraska, Hawai'i, Idaho, and Utah) of the 28 states in which incidence trends could be measured. Researchers credit declines in smoking for much of this progress.

The report confirms earlier studies showing the cancer mortality rate would be virtually unchanged if it weren't for growing numbers of Americans rejecting tobacco, says author Ahmedin Jemal of the American Cancer Society, another of the report's sponsors.

"We often focus on treating diseases that may give someone a few months, but by preventing smoking, you can give someone 10 or 15 years," Jemal says.

Researchers have a wealth of evidence demonstrating how to cut smoking rates: hike cigarette taxes, ban smoking in public places, invest in educating young people and provide smoking cessation counseling, says Therese Bevers, associate professor at Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.