IN THE same week as the controversial Philip Morris advertisements, the World Health Organisation released the results of a massive worldwide survey of smoking.
The WHO is usually associated with infectious diseases like cholera and polio, but read these latest statistics and it is soon clear why the health agency sees this as a "tobacco epidemic" and a "global public health emergency".
Whatever Philip Morris would have you believe, there can be no passive (or involuntary) smoking without a cigarette, and the facts against cigarettes are now incontrovertible smoking is the largest single avoidable cause of ill health.
According to the WHO, smoking kills three million people a year, six times as many as die in road accidents. In 30 years time, when today's teenage smokers are middle aged, and beginning to die for a cigarette, the figure will be 10 million deaths a year.
Its report, based on surveys among 85 per cent of the world's population, is the first ever "comprehensive status report on the global tobacco situation". It paints a bleak picture although smoking is declining in developed countries, this is more than offset by an increase in smoking in developing countries and people are now starting to smoke at a younger age. The major health risk associated with smoking is lung cancer and some 500,000 people died last year from smoking related lung cancer but according to the WHO, smoking actually causes more deaths from other diseases all told, including over 600,000 deaths from heart and vascular disease.
Other health affects, including premature ageing, disability, and the effects of smoking on fertility and the brain, have all been laid at tobacco's door.
None of which has stopped the multi billion pound industry. Tobacco is grown commercially in over 100 countries, though in fact just 25 countries account for over 90 per cent of world production.
It can be a valuable crop to some in Malawi, it accounts for 64 per cent of all export earnings, and in Zimbabwe, 23 per cent.
In Ireland, smoking has declined in popularity from 43 per cent of adults in 1973 to 30 per cent today. However, smoking still kills an estimated 7,000 Irish people every year.
A WORRYING trend is the growing numbers of young people, and especially young women, taking to tobacco. According to the Department of Health, 10 per cent of 6th class students in Dublin primary schools now smoke at least one cigarette a day.
