Norway's White Ribbon Bulletin
Tobacco
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Introduction
The tobacco epidemic is one of the
biggest public health threats the world has ever faced, killing around 6
million people a year. More than 5 million of those deaths are the result of
direct tobacco use while more than 600 000 are the result of non-smokers being
exposed to second-hand smoke.
Nearly 80% of the more than 1 billion
smokers worldwide live in low- and middle-income countries, where the burden of
tobacco-related illness and death is heaviest.
Tobacco users who die prematurely
deprive their families of income, raise the cost of health care and hinder
economic development.
In some countries, children from poor
households are frequently employed in tobacco farming to provide family income.
These children are especially vulnerable to "green tobacco sickness",
which is caused by the nicotine that is absorbed through the skin from the
handling of wet tobacco leaves.
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Surveillance is key
Good monitoring tracks the extent and
character of the tobacco epidemic and indicates how best to tailor policies.
Only 1 in 3 countries, representing one third of the world's population,
monitors tobacco use by repeating nationally representative youth and adult
surveys at least once every 5 years.
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Second-hand smoke kills
Second-hand smoke is the smoke that
fills restaurants, offices or other enclosed spaces when people burn tobacco
products such as cigarettes, bidis and water-pipes. There are
more than 4000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, of which at least 250 are known to
be harmful and more than 50 are known to cause cancer.
There is no safe level of exposure to
second-hand tobacco smoke.
In
adults, second-hand smoke causes serious cardiovascular and respiratory
diseases, including coronary heart disease and lung cancer. In infants, it
causes sudden death. In pregnant women, it causes low birth weight.
Almost
half of children regularly breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke in public
places.
Second-hand
smoke causes more than 600 000 premature deaths per year.
In
2004, children accounted for 28% of the deaths attributable to second-hand
smoke.
Every person should be able to breathe
tobacco-smoke-free air. Smoke-free laws protect the health of non-smokers, are
popular, do not harm business and encourage smokers to quit.
Over 1.3 billion people, or 18% of the
world's population, are protected by comprehensive national smoke-free laws.