The number of humans on Earth continues to increase, but there are fewer and fewer smokers. According to a new report from the World Health Organization, 1.3 billion people used tobacco worldwide in 2020. This is 20 million less than two years earlier.
The WHO expects the decline to continue until 2025, and then forecasts 1.27 billion consumers or about 20% of the world population aged over 15 years. By way of comparison, in 2000, this proportion was still almost a third.
A war with the tobacco industry
While he is delighted with the drop in smokers, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned: “We have a long way to go, and the tobacco industry is going to fizzle out. 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”.
In Europe, 18% of women smoke
WHO is pleased that 60 countries are on track to achieve 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,” said Ruediger Krech, who heads the WHO health promotion department, while putting a caveat: “This success is fragile”.
According to the report, with just $ 1.68 of investment per capita in supportive measures for smoking cessation, 152 million consumers could quit smoking by 2030. Even if the numbers decline and they do not ‘not include electronic cigarettes (which are hugely successful), the report points out that 36.7% of men and 7.8% of women worldwide still used tobacco last year.
In addition, there are 38 million children between the ages of 13 and 15, or 10% of all adolescents in this age group. In Europe, 18% of women continue to use tobacco, significantly more than in any other region of the world, and “European women are reducing their consumption the least rapidly” in the world. The Western Pacific region is expected to have the highest rate of consumption among men in 2025 (45%).