Every minute, 15 people die from tobacco and 10 million smokers light a cigarette, and on World No Tobacco Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) called on farmers to grow edible food instead of tobacco plants, with the aim of enhancing food security.
Here are 5 key points to know on World No Tobacco Day on Wednesday.
How many smokers are there in the world?
The World Health Organization (WHO) and The Tobacco Atlas estimate that the number of smokers exceeds one billion people in the world, with about 8 billion people living.
Every year, smokers consume more than 5,<> billion cigarettes, according to the Tobacco Atlas Center for Tobacco Information at Vital Strategies and the University of Illinois in Chicago.
The proportion of smokers globally has been declining for years, thanks to anti-smoking measures imposed by countries such as tax increases and the advent of e-cigarettes in recent years.
In 2000, one-third of the world's population over the age of 15 smoked. Today, that percentage has fallen to about 20%.
How many victims of smoking?
Tobacco is the leading cause of death, preventable, and one person dies every 4 seconds in the world from cigarettes.
Active smoking or secondhand smoke killed about 9 million people in 2019, according to a study published in The Lancet in 2021.
Diseases directly related to tobacco are cancer, especially lung cancer, myocardial infarction, cardiovascular disease and respiratory disorders such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
In the 20th century, tobacco killed 100 million people, according to a 2009 study published in the journal Nature, more than the number of victims of World War II (between 60 and 80 million) and World War I, in which there were 18 million deaths.
Mass smoking can kill 450 million people in the first half of the 21st century and is costly for society, absorbing 6% of global health spending, according to a study coordinated by the World Health Organization and published by Tobacco Control in 2018.
What impact does smoking have on the planet?
Cigarettes harm not only smokers' lungs and arteries, but also the planet. Tobacco production and consumption emit about 84 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to a fifth of the pollution from commercial aircraft, according to the World Health Organization.
About one million tonnes of cigarette butts are thrown away annually and they contain the non-biodegradable substance cellulose acetate.
Tobacco cultivation requires 22 billion tonnes of water annually and its industry produces 25 million tonnes of solid waste.
Is the cigarette manufacturing sector in decline?
Nothing is certain according to the Tobacco Atlas. In wealthy countries, this powerful industry has expanded into alternative products, primarily e-cigarettes.
In low- and middle-income countries, big tobacco companies continue their "aggressive" price policy and spend huge sums to fight tobacco control measures.
Two U.S. economic analysis firms expect the next five to eight years to see a 2.5 percent year-on-year increase in the sector's total trading volume, which will reach $940 billion in 2023.