WHO tobacco control report: How dangerous is second-hand smoke?

Second-hand tobacco consumption leads to the death of an estimated 1.3 million non-smokers, including infants and children, globally, as per the latest WHO report. It also says that India’s Bengaluru has been successful in reducing smoking in public places by 27 per cent Smoking has declined globally with 300 million fewer smokers today, according to a recent report by the World Health Organisation on progress in implementing tobacco control measures. As per the report, the prevalence of tobacco smoking fell from 22.8 per cent in 2007 to 17 per cent in 2021 in the last 15 years since the United Nations health agency developed MPOWER measures to reduce tobacco smoking worldwide. “Still 2.3 billion people in 44 countries remain unprotected by any evidence-based demand reduction tobacco control measures, leaving them at risk of the health and economic burden of tobacco use,” Dr Ruediger Krech, WHO’s health promotion director, was quoted as saying by Euronews. “WHO urges all countries to put in place all of the MPOWER measures at a best-practice level to fight the tobacco epidemic, which kills 8.7 million people globally, and push back against the tobacco and nicotine industries, which lobby against these public health measures,” Krech said, as per Indian Express.