Deadly habit

Washington, Aug. 26 (Reuters): Tobacco use will kill 6 million people next year from cancer, heart disease, emphysema and a range of other ills, global cancer experts said in a report issued yesterday.

The new Tobacco Atlas from the World Lung Foundation and the American Cancer Society estimates that tobacco use costs the global economy $500 billion a year in direct medical expenses, lost productivity and environmental harm.

“Tobacco’s total economic costs reduce national wealth in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 3.6 per cent,” the report reads.

“Tobacco accounts for one out of every 10 deaths worldwide and will claim 5.5 million lives this year alone,” the report said. If current trends hold, by 2020, the number will grow to an estimated 7 million and top 8 million by 2030.

Last week the US Food and Drug Administration launched a tobacco centre to oversee cigarettes and other related products, after winning the power to do so from Congress in June. Yesterday it set up a committee of advisers to help guide it.

Over the past four decades, smoking rates have declined in rich countries like the US, Britain and Japan while rising in much of the developing world, according to the nonprofit research and advocacy organisations.

Some other findings from the report, available at http://www.tobaccoatlas.org/:

• 1 billion men smoke — 35 per cent of men in rich countries and 50 per cent of men in developing countries.

• About 250 million women smoke daily — 22 per cent of women in developed countries and 9 per cent of women in developing countries.

• Smoking rates among women are either stable or increasing in several southern, central and eastern European countries.

• The risk of dying from lung cancer is more than 23 times higher for men who smoke than for non-smokers and 13 times higher for women smokers.

• Tobacco kills one-third to one-half of those who smoke. Smokers die an average of 15 years earlier than non-smokers.

• Nearly 60 per cent of Chinese men smoke and China consumes more than 37 per cent of the world’s cigarettes.

• 50 million Chinese children will die prematurely from tobacco-related diseases.

• Tobacco use will eventually kill 250 million of today’s teenagers and children.

• Nearly one-quarter of young people who smoke tried their first cigarette before the age of 10.