The latest World Health Organization report on the global tobacco epidemic published yesterday finds that more countries have implemented tobacco control policies, ranging from graphic pack warnings and advertising bans to no smoking areas.

About 4.7 billion people – 63% of the world’s population – are covered by at least one comprehensive tobacco control measure, which has quadrupled since 2007 when only 1 billion people and 15% of the world’s population were covered. Strategies to implement such policies have saved millions of people from early death.

However, the tobacco industry continues to hamper government efforts to fully implement life- and cost-saving interventions, according to the new WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2017.

"Governments around the world must waste no time in incorporating all the provisions of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control into their national tobacco control programmes and policies," says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. "They must also clamp down on the illicit tobacco trade, which is exacerbating the global tobacco epidemic and its related health and socioeconomic consequences".

Read full new release here

Download the report via the link below.