The World Health Organisation today said that most of the world’s population were not protected by anti-smoking laws, leaving them exposed to the most prevalent preventable cause of death.
In a report entitled Global Tobacco Epidemic, the WHO said that second-hand smoke prematurely kills 600,000 people each year, as well as causing painful and debilitating diseases and costing the economy tens of billions of dollars.
While they acknowledged that progress had been made, as more and more countries introduced smoke-free laws, they warned that governments needed to act quickly to prevent more deaths. At the moment 2.3% of the world’s population are protected by anti-smoking laws.
So far 17 countries across the world have introduced anti-smoking laws, with Columbia, Djibouti, Guatemala, Mauritius, Panama and Zambia signing up to the policy in 2008.
The report called for urgent action to be taken to control the tobacco epidemic, warning that unless drastic measures were taken annually 8 million people could die by 2030. They added that 80% of those deaths would occur in low and middle income countries, where it would be hardest to prevent and deal with such losses.
The WHO added that they were concerned that the disparity between the amounts gained by governments through tobacco taxes and the amount spent on stopping smoking was so large.