2024-01-16 13:41:55
The number of adults who use tobacco around the world has steadily declined in recent years, said the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, which warns that the industry is not disarming and is targeting younger audiences.
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In 2022, around one in five adults in the world smoked or consumed tobacco derivatives, compared to one in three at the turn of the millennium, the WHO recalled in a new report.
In it, she examines trends in smoking prevalence between 2000 and 2030. Data shows that 150 countries have successfully reduced tobacco consumption.
But for the WHO, the tobacco industry is intensifying its efforts to undermine this progress, in particular by trying to get children addicted to new, highly addictive products.
“Personally, I find it criminal,” Ruediger Krech, director of the WHO health promotion department, told the press in Geneva.
“They kill and continue to do everything possible to undermine the excellent efforts” of countries showing progress.
The organization’s statistics show that smoking kills more than eight million people each year, including regarding 1.3 million non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke.
The latency time between the implementation of strict tobacco control measures and the reduction in the number of deaths from smoking is around thirty years, underlines the report.
And even if the number of smokers has continued to decrease, the WHO estimates that the objective of a 30% reduction in tobacco consumption between 2010 and 2025 cannot be achieved.
Fifty-six countries should achieve this, including Brazil, which has already managed to reduce its tobacco consumption by 35% since 2010.
Six countries, on the other hand, have seen tobacco consumption increase since 2010: Congo, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Oman and Moldova.
However, overall, the world is on track to reduce tobacco consumption by a quarter over the period 2010-2025, the report’s authors estimate.
But the WHO warns that the tobacco industry has no intention of standing idly by.
“Notable progress has been made in tobacco control in recent years, but now is not the time to remain inactive,” warned Ruediger Krech, director of the department of health promotion at WHO, in a communicated.
“I am amazed to see how far the tobacco industry is willing to go to make profits at the expense of countless lives,” he accused, stressing that as soon as a country thinks it has won the war on tobacco, the tobacco industry is reopening a new front.
Fight interference
The WHO calls for combating “tobacco industry interference.”
Dr. Krech expressed concern regarding the industry’s growing efforts to infiltrate and influence regulatory bodies.
He expressed particular concern for the meeting of the Global Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which is being held in Panama next month.
Dr. Krech also draws attention to new so-called smoke-free products such as electronic cigarettes.
Although tobacco companies say they do not target young people, the WHO official notes that their products come in thousands of flavors and shapes, appealing to children and young people.
The WHO urged all countries to maintain and strengthen their control policies and combat “tobacco industry interference.”
The report highlights the need to collect better data on tobacco use among adolescents.
Thus, 10% of young people aged 13 to 15 around the world consume one or more types of tobacco.
This represents at least 37 million adolescent tobacco users, including at least 12 million who use these new products. These figures are largely underestimated since more than 70 countries provide no data.
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