LONDON: The number of men who smoke and use tobacco has stopped rising and is on the turn for the first time, marking a shift in a global epidemic that has killed tens of millions of people over decades, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.
The change in global smoking trends shows that governments’ efforts to control tobacco are working “to save lives, protect health, beat tobacco”, the WHO said in a report.
It promised to work closely with countries to maintain the downward trend. “For many years now we had witnessed a steady rise in the number of males using deadly tobacco products. But now, for the first time, we are seeing a decline in male use, driven by governments being tougher on the tobacco industry,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s Director-General, said in a statement about the report’s findings. READ MORE