PHA-Exchange> Smoking could kill 1 billion this century: WHO

[claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn]

 from Vern Weitzel <vern at coombs.anu.edu.au> -----

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070702/hl_nm/smoking_dc

Smoking could kill 1 billion this century: WHO

By Ed Cropley
Mon Jul 2, 7:22 AM ET

BANGKOK (Reuters) - One billion people will die of tobacco-related diseases 
this 
century unless governments in rich and poor countries alike get serious about 
preventing smoking, top World Health Organization (WHO) experts said on Monday.

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"Tobacco is a defective product. It kills half of its customers," Douglas 
Bettcher, head of the WHO's Tobacco Free Initiative, said at the start of an 
international conference in Bangkok to draw up a masterplan for the world to 
kick the habit.

"It kills 5.4 million people per year and half of those deaths are in 
developing 
countries. That's like one jumbo jet going down every hour," he said.

With smoking rates in many developing countries on the rise, particularly 
among 
teenagers, that annual death toll would rise to 8.3 million within the next 20 
years, he added.

However, if governments introduced measures such as aggressive taxation, 
banning 
cigarette advertising and making offices and public places totally tobacco-
free, 
smoking rates could halve by 2050, he said.

"It's a completely preventable epidemic," Bettcher said, citing countries such 
as Singapore, Australia and Thailand where tough anti-smoking laws have helped 
people to quit.

"If we do that, by 2050 we can save 200 million lives."

Officials from 147 countries are attending the week-long conference, which is 
likely to agree on binding laws against cross-border tobacco advertising -- a 
move against events such as Formula One -- as well as tougher legislation 
against cigarette smuggling.

Around 600 billion cigarettes were smuggled in 2006 -- 11 percent of the 
world's 
consumption -- according to the Framework Convention Alliance (FAC), an 
umbrella 
group of hundreds of anti-tobacco organizations.

As well as keeping the prices artificially low and thereby stimulating demand, 
the counterfeit cigarette industry also deprives governments of more than $40 
billion in missed taxes, the FCA estimates.

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In Thailand, smoking rates have fallen from 30 percent in 1992 to around 18 
percent, a decline health officials attribute to a ban on all domestic tobacco 
advertising 15 years ago.

"The most important medicines in tobacco control are: number one, increasing 
taxation; number two, bans on advertising; and number three, smoke-free public 
places," said Hatai Chitanondh of the Thailand Health Promotion Institute.

Besides agreeing laws on cross-border advertising and smuggling, the 
conference 
is also likely to issue guidelines for countries introducing legislation on 
"second-hand smoke" and "smoke-free" areas.

Although not legally binding, anti-smoking campaigners are delighted with the 
explicit wording of the guidelines.

"There is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke and notions such as a 
threshold value for toxicity from second-hand smoke should be rejected as they 
are contradicted by scientific evidence," a draft copy of the guidelines said.

"Approaches other than 100 percent smoke-free environments, including 
ventilation, air filtration and use of designated smoking areas have 
repeatedly 
been shown to be ineffective."



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