Tobacco use killed 100 million people world-wide in the 20th century and could kill 1 billion people in the 21st century unless governments act quickly to dramatically reduce use, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a report Thursday. Governments collect over $200 billion in tobacco taxes each year but spend less than 0.2 percent of that revenue to tobacco control, WHO said. “We hold in our hands the solution to the global tobacco epidemic that threatens the lives of 1 billion men, women, and children during this century,” WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said in an introduction to the report. The WHO report calls on all countries to dramatically increase efforts to prevent young people from starting to smoke, help smokers quit, and protect nonsmokers from exposure to smoke. The report urges governments to adopt six tobacco-control policies, including to raise taxes and prices of tobacco; ban tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship; protect people from secondhand smoke; warn people about the dangers of tobacco; help those who want to quit smoking; and monitor tobacco use to understand and reverse the epidemic.
