WHO Director-General: A Global Anti-Tobacco Campaign Should Be Launched, No Mention of the E-cigaret

On the 18th, World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan urged the world to take action to force tobacco companies out of business. At the same time, she praised the progress made by a number of countries on tobacco control.

“This will be a difficult battle, but we should not give up until we are certain that all tobacco companies have closed,” AFP reported Chan as saying at the World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. “Tobacco companies exert influence in many ways, including funding political parties and bribing individual politicians, challenging the determination and resolve of governments to protect public health.” Chan also said she was pleased to see that, through the joint efforts of many countries, not smoking was “becoming the norm.” According to the latest WHO report, the proportion of smokers in the total population declined last year in 125 countries worldwide.

In her speech, Chan praised progress made by countries such as Australia on tobacco control and called on other nations to take similar action. She particularly emphasized the importance of plain cigarette packaging laws (which prohibit brand logos on cigarette packs and allow only the product name in promotional text) being passed in multiple countries. She urged countries that produce tobacco leaf to “move faster” and work with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the WHO to control the volume of tobacco products. Since Australia passed its plain packaging law in 2012, smoking rates have fallen sharply. Iceland passed a similar bill last month, which has now been fully implemented with notable results. The UK also planned to implement the law in May of the following year. Chan said that more than 10 other countries, including Burkina Faso and New Zealand, were also considering plain packaging legislation.

The World Conference on Tobacco or Health is held once every three years and lasts for five days. This conference mainly discussed whether tobacco directly causes major non-communicable diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease.

According to WHO statistics, smoking accounts for one-sixth of all deaths from non-communicable diseases, and about 50% of smokers worldwide eventually die from the diseases mentioned above. In addition, the total number of deaths caused by smoking each year worldwide is as high as 6 million, equivalent to one person dying from smoking every six seconds. Experts attending the conference warned that if decisive measures are not taken, the annual global death toll from smoking could reach 8 million by 2030. Some experts even predict that smoking could cause 1 billion deaths over the course of the 21st century.

It is worth noting that although e-cigarettes are an emerging technology sector and are considered far less harmful to the human body than traditional tobacco, Margaret Chan did not mention any proposal to ban e-cigarettes.