Over 1 Billion Tobacco Smokers in the World: Report

Policies to control tobacco use, including tobacco tax and price increases, can generate significant government revenues for health and development work, according to a new global report from WHO and the National Cancer Institute of the United States of America.

Such measures can also greatly reduce tobacco use and protect people’s health from the world’s leading killers, such as cancers and heart disease.

But left unchecked, the tobacco industry and the deadly impact of its products cost the world’s economies more than US$ 1 trillion annually in healthcare expenditures and lost productivity, according to findings published in The economics of tobacco and tobacco control.

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Currently, around 6 million people die annually as a result of tobacco use, with most living in developing countries.

The almost 700-page monograph examines existing evidence on two broad areas:

• The economics of tobacco control, including tobacco use and growing, manufacturing and trade, taxes and prices, control policies and other interventions to reduce tobacco use and its consequences; and
• The economic implications of global tobacco control efforts.

Globally, there are 1.1 billion tobacco smokers aged 15 or older, with around 80% living in low- and middle-income countries. Approximately 226 million smokers live in poverty.

The monograph, citing a 2016 study, states that annual excise revenues from cigarettes globally could increase by 47%, or US$ 140 billion, if all countries raised excise taxes by about US$ 0.80 per pack.

Additionally, this tax increase would raise cigarette retail prices on average by 42%, leading to a 9% decline in smoking rates and up to 66 million fewer adult smokers.

Tobacco control is a key component of WHO’s global response to the epidemic of NCDs, primarily cardiovascular disease, cancers, chronic obstructed pulmonary disease and diabetes.

NCDs account for the deaths of around 16 million people prematurely (before their 70th birthdays) every year. Reducing tobacco use plays a major role in global efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of reducing premature deaths from NCDs by one-third by 2030.