According to Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, around 100 million deaths could be saved if every country around the world reduced its adult smoking rate to below 20% or by an additional 5% if already under 20%. His views, and those of Dr Thomas Frieden, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, are published in today’s (18 May) Lancet.
They claim that throughout the 21st century, tobacco will kill 1,000 million people prematurely throughout the world. However, despite all the evidence showing the effectiveness of anti-tobacco initiatives, only a handful of countries have effectively used interventions to bring smoking levels down.
Countries which have implemented some effective anti-tobacco policies include Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa and Sweden – all of which have reduced their smoking populations to less than 20%.
In their article, Bloomberg and Frieden highlight the success of the comprehensive tobacco control programme introduced in NY in 2002, which included raising cigarette tax by 32% and making public places smoke-free. Within two years, the population of adult smokers in NY had dropped from 21.4% to 18.4%.
Source: Alphagalileo.org, 18 May 2007