WHO on Smoking

·         In Feb 2008 WHO report 'The Tobacco Use and Control Efforts” put that an increasing number of teenagers in India is taking to tobacco and nearly one million people die every year due to tobacco-related illnesses

Report says

·         “9.7 pc teenaged girls in India were using some form of tobacco as against just 3.1 pc of women. Similarly, 17.3 teenaged boys had taken to smoking.

·         tobacco use in India was starting at quite a young age and in many cases at schools.

·         at least 14.1 percent of youngsters was consuming tobacco products like cigarettes and bidis.

·         It found that a total 60 percent of adults in the country was consuming tobacco, of which 57 percent were men.
there were more than one billion smokers in the world.

·         use of tobacco products was increasing mainly in developing and underdeveloped countries.

·         Almost half of the world's children breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke.

·         The epidemic is shifting to the developing world. More than 80 percent of the world's smokers live in low and middle-income countries

·         Across the globe, tobacco use kills 5.4 million people every year, of which one million are Indians.

·         This means an average of one person dies every six seconds, accounting for one in 10 adult deaths worldwide.

·         Tobacco is cultivated around the world and can be legally purchased in all countries.

·         The dried leaf is smoked in the form of manufactured cigarettes, bidis, cigars, kreteks, pipes and sticks

·         It is also chewed throughout the world, but principally in South and Southeast Asia, often together with areca nuts and staked lime

• Tobacco is the primary cause of health problems like cancer and cardiovascular diseases. It also aggravates problems like diabetes.