Governments doing little to prevent tobacco-related deaths

A new report from the world health organization finds that governments around the globe are doing little to prevent the millions of tobacco-related deaths that occur each year.

In the first-ever global report on tobacco control, the world health organization reveals tobacco use is still the world’s number one cause of preventable death, responsible for more than five million deaths each year.

But few governments are doing much to fix the problem.

Just five percent of people worldwide are protected by national smoke-free laws that ban tobacco use in most public places — and 40 per cent of Countries still allow smoking in schools and hospitals.

Only nine countries have fully available services to help smokers quit.

The report finds that money is part of the problem — governments receive
500 times as much money from tobacco taxes as they spend on efforts to reduce smoking.

Experts list six steps countries should be taking to fight tobacco, which are

— monitoring tobacco use among their citizens
— protecting people from tobacco smoke
— helping smokers to quit
— warning people about health dangers
— enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, and
— raising taxes on tobacco products.