Number of smokers globally expected to fall to 1.27 Bn by 2025 – WHO

SWITZERLAND: The number of smokers worldwide has dropped steadily in recent years, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, urging countries to step up control measures further to kick deadly tobacco addiction.

In 2020, some 1.30 billion people were using tobacco globally, down from 1.32 billion two years earlier, the WHO said in a fresh report.

And that number, it said, is expected to dwindle to 1.27 billion by 2025, indicating a decrease of some 50 million tobacco users over a seven-year-period, even as the global population has swelled.

The report showed that while nearly a third of the global population over the age of 15 used tobacco products back in 2000, only around a fifth is expected to be doing so by 2025.

“It is very encouraging to see fewer people using tobacco each year,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

Tobacco use is estimated to kill more than eight million people each year, most of them directly due to their own tobacco use, while 1.2 million of them are non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke, according to WHO numbers.

Tuesday’s report stated that 60 countries were now on track to reduce tobacco use by 30 percent between 2010 and 2025.

When WHO published its last report on global tobacco trends two years ago, only 32 countries were on track to do so. While the numbers are coming down, the report, which did not include electronic cigarette use, highlighted that 36.7 percent of all men and 7.8 percent of the world’s women were still using tobacco products last year.

Even more concerning, it said that 38 million teens between the ages of 13 and 15 were also doing so.

That accounts for 10 percent of all adolescents in that age group, with boys far more likely to smoke than girls.

Europe is the region of the world where most women use tobacco products — a full 18 percent, the report showed.

The Western Pacific region is where most men smoke, with over 45 percent of men expected to still be using tobacco there by 2025.

– THE STATESMAN