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Global Campaign Seeks To Crush Spread Of Smoking

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By DAVID BROWN, The Washington Post

Published: February 8, 2008

One billion people may die of tobacco-related illness this century, almost all of them in developing countries, the World Health Organization warned Thursday as it rolled out an unprecedented global campaign to limit the spread of smoking.

The effort provides for the first time a comprehensive look at tobacco use, as well as smoking control and taxation policies, in 179 countries. It also lays out six strategies to reduce tobacco use, many used by rich countries in recent decades, although far from fully deployed even there.
Tobacco use is a risk factor for six of the world's eight leading causes of death and causes about one in every 10 deaths of adults now. That toll is expected to rise steeply as tobacco companies target new customers, particularly women, in low-income countries, WHO officials said.

"What we're saying is that we don't want to let that happen," said Douglas Bettcher, director of the WHO initiative. "We want to see the operating environment of the tobacco companies become as difficult as possible in the near future."

Although WHO cannot force countries to make stringent tobacco control a priority, it hopes to convince them such efforts are cheap, proven and especially beneficial to their poorest citizens.

"In many countries, money spent by the poor on cigarettes is taken away from what they could spend on health and education," said Patrick Petit, an economist at WHO who helped produce the 329-page report accompanying the initiative's launch in New York.

Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, said the compilation of data is itself a powerful tool for change. "I truly believe that what gets measured gets done," she said.

The six strategies are:

•Monitoring tobacco use and control policy.

•Protecting people by enforcing smoke-free laws.

•Offering smokers nicotine replacement and counseling.

•Warning about smoking's hazards on cigarette packs.

•Enforcing bans on tobacco advertising and promotion.

•Raising the price of tobacco through taxes.

Numerous studies have shown that raising the price of cigarettes is by far the most powerful strategy.

For every 10 percent increase in price, cigarette consumption overall drops about 4 percent, and about 8 percent in young people.

Some cities, states and provinces employ many of the strategies in a coordinated fashion; no countries do so on a national basis, the WHO report said.

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