WHO Urges a Ban on Tobacco Advertising
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World Health Organisation suggest smoking advertising ban.
In a 2008 review into public health issues the World Health Organisation suggests that it is the responsibility of governments worldwide to protect the world’s 1.8 billion young people by imposing tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship bans.
Estimates suggest that about 175 million deaths linked to smoking will occur between now and 2030.
Although smoking and the use of tobacco products is on a decline in most developed countries, thanks largely to anti-smoking campaigns and legislature, this is not the case in many developing nations.
As legislation and anti-smoking campaigns start having an impact on their sales in developed countries, the tobacco corporations move their focus to the developing nations where little or no such restrictions exist to curb their sales appeal.
Often the governments of these countries rely on the revenue generated by the tobacco industry.
The dilemma between taking care of the health of their citizens and reliance upon the economic gains garnered from the tobacco industry is not always easy to settle in favour of the health benefits of an anti-smoking stance.
It is said that over 1 million people are employed worldwide in the tobacco industry, the highest employment levels in this industry being in India, China and Indonesia.
China alone produces three times as many cigarettes as the USA, about one third of the total consumed worldwide. But the number of people employed in the Chinese tobacco industry is not three times the number employed in the USA, but NINE times as many!
So the tobacco industry not only provides employment, but if people can be encouraged to smoke local brands of cigarettes, then the economic benefit increases substantially to that nation. In China about 300 million smokers are said to use more than 3 million cigarettes a minute between them, that’s over 1.5 billion per year!
India consumes roughly half this number of cigarettes per year. In the UK about 5,000 people are directly employed in the tobacco industry, according to the TMA (Tobacco Manufacturers Association) and up to 80,000 people have jobs linked to the tobacco industry in retail, wholesale and distribution.
Other nations may not impose the high taxation on cigarettes that the British government does (raising about £10 billion per annum on cigarettes, never mind the income tax revenue from those employed in the industry) but the worldwide revenue benefits will remain obvious.
Sadly the health risks of smoking to their citizens and the costs of health care to all governments have yet to supersede the revenue benefits.or wouldn’t smoking have been banned entirely in at least some countries by now?
“Tobacco not only kills people, it also saps national treasuries,” says the World Health Organization. It believes that the cost of health care related to smoking outstrips the other financial benefits.
