A report by US-based organization, Vital Strategies has revealed that for the first time on record, smoking rates have declined globally.
The report, which was done in conjunction with the Tobacconomics team at the University of Illinois at Chicago says globally, there are 1.1 billion smokers and 200 million more people who use other tobacco products.
The figures mean a decline in smoking rates from 22.6 percent of people in 2007 to 19.6 percent in 2019, they said, the first since the report began in 2002.
According to aLancet survey. the prevalence rate of tobacco smoking in Africa is only 14%. Low, compared to the Americas (23%) and Eastern Mediterranean (31%), but its growth is the highest in the world. Mozambique, for example, has seen a 220% growth in cigarette consumption over the past 16 years.
Jeffrey Drope, is a public health professor at the University of Illinois, “The industry is still preying on emerging economies in ways that will lock in harms for a generation or more.”
The data also shows tobacco use caused almost 8.7 million deaths worldwide in 2019, and approximately $2 trillion in economic damage. While more than half of the deaths are currently in high-income countries, this is expected to change if cigarette use continues to rise in lower-income areas.
The report also suggests that the tobacco industry is targeting black people in the United States with menthol cigarette promotion. The authors backed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s plan to ban their sale.