The battle is still far from won. The number of smokers has fallen steadily in recent years, but efforts to curb smoking must continue in the face of activism from the tobacco industry, warns the World Health Organization (WHO), Tuesday 16 November.
In 2020, 1.3 billion people used tobacco worldwide, 20 million less than two years earlier, according to a new report from the UN agency. It expects this decline to continue until 2025 and then predicts 1.27 billion consumers or about 20% of the world population over the age of 15. In 2000, this proportion was still almost a third.
While he welcomes the drop, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned: “We still have a long way to go, and the tobacco industry will do everything in its power to defend the gigantic profits it derives from the sale of its deadly product.”
Tobacco kills more than eight million users each year and an additional 1.2 million people die from passive smoking, according to WHO statistics. The number of deaths will also continue to increase despite a drop in consumption, “because tobacco kills slowly”.
WHO is pleased that 60 countries are on track to meet the goal of a voluntary 30% reduction in consumption between 2010 and 2025. This is almost twice as many as two years ago . “We are seeing significant progress in many countries”, stressed Ruediger Krech, who heads the WHO health promotion department, while admitting that “this success is fragile”.
Because even though the numbers – which do not include e-cigarettes, which are hugely successful – are dropping, the report points out that 36.7% of men and 7.8% of women worldwide still used tobacco during the year. last.