Fact File: Tobacco and Poverty

This year, World No Tobacco Day will focus on the theme 'Tobacco and Poverty'. The subject of this day is "Poverty-Causing, Poverty-Sustaining and Exploitative Labour Practices in the Tobacco Industry".
Following is a list of facts relating to the use of tobacco and the hazards it causes.
-- Tobacco is the fourth most common risk factor for diseases world-wide.
-- Although tobacco use has declined in many high-income countries in recent decades, there have been sharp increases in tobacco use, especially among men, in low and middle-income countries in recent year.
-- Mainly, it is the developing countries that face the brunt of tobacco menace.
-- Close to 60% of the 5.700 billion cigarettes smoked each year and 75% of tobacco users are in developing countries.
-- A report estimated that the use of tobacco resulted in an annual global net loss of US $200,000 million; a third of this loss incurred by the developing nations.
-- The proportion of household expenditures used to purchase tobacco products is often very high in developing countries.
-- Also, public health costs relating to tobacco use are of extraordinary proportions.
-- Tobacco kills people at the height of their productivity, depriving families of their breadwinners and nations of a healthy workforce.
-- Along with countries, development agencies, donors and multilateral agencies too are recognising that tobacco use has serious implications for poverty that go far beyond the health implications.
-- We tend to ignore the environmental costs as well. Tobacco growing harms the environment. It leads to the degradation of the environment caused by the tobacco plant leaching nutrients from the soil, pollution from pesticides and fertilisers and deforestation as a result of the fire curing of some common varieties of tobacco.
-- A recent study that assessed the amount of forest and woodland consumed annually for producing tobacco concluded that nearly 5% of overall deforestation in respective growing countries was due to tobacco cultivation.
-- Child labour is another critical issue linked to the same menace. In the late 1990's, UNICEF concluded that use of children in tobacco production was widespread in many tobacco-producing countries.