09 Mar 2009

The American Cancer Society and World Lung Foundation have released a new edition of The Tobacco Atlas. This comprehensive volume of research and its accompanying website graphically display how tobacco is devastating global health and economies.

According to The Tobacco Atlas, tobacco’s estimated $500 billion drain on the world economy exceeds the total combined annual expenditure on health in all low-and middle-income countries. The economic costs come as a result of lost productivity, misused resources, ineffective taxation and premature death:

• Because 25% of smokers die and many more become ill during their most productive years, income loss devastates families and communities.
• Cigarettes are the world’s most widely smuggled legal consumer product. In 2006, about 600 billion smuggled cigarettes made it to the market, representing an enormous missed tax opportunity for governments, as well as a missed opportunity to prevent many people from starting to smoke and encourage others to quit.
• Tobacco replaces potential food production on almost four million hectares (just under ten million acres) of the world’s agricultural land, equal to all of the world’s orange groves or banana plantations.
• In developing countries, smokers spend great sums of money in proportion to their incomes that could otherwise be spent on food, healthcare and other necessities.

The Tobacco Atlas crystallizes an undeniable trend: the tobacco industry has shifted its marketing and sales efforts to countries that have less effective public health policies and fewer resources in place:

• In 2010, tobacco will kill six million people annually, 72 percent of whom will be in low and middle-income countries.
• Since 1960 global tobacco production has increased 300% in low- and middle-resource countries while dropping more than 50% in high-resource countries.
• In India and China together, over half a billion men are consuming tobacco.
• In Bangladesh alone, if the average household bought food with the money normally spent on tobacco, more than ten million people would no longer suffer from malnutrition and 350 children under age five could be saved each day.

The new online version of the publication enables policy makers, public health practitioners, advocates and journalists to interact with the data and create customizable charts, graphs and maps.