Medical Experts Call for a Tobacco-Free World by 2040

Ambitious effort sees possibility of effectively eliminating tobacco use within 30 years.

March 17, 2015

LONDON – Last week, leading public health researchers wrote an article in the medical journal The Lancet, calling for the sale of tobacco to be phased out by 2040. According to the researchers, with sufficient political support and stronger evidence-based action against the tobacco industry, a tobacco-free world — where less than 5% of adults use tobacco — could be possible in less than three decades.

The international group of health and policy experts are now calling on the United Nations (UN) to lead a "turbo-charged" effort against the sale and consumption of tobacco, in part by launching a series of research papers and events, beginning at the 2015 World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Abu Dhabi, the world's largest gathering of tobacco control advocates, policy makers, researchers, public health and clinical experts.

In a new research article, published in The Lancet to accompany the series, researchers in Japan show that although overall rates of smoking are slowly declining, the prevalence of tobacco usage is actually expected to increase in some countries over the next decade, notably in Africa and the Middle East. And because the world's population is rising, there will still be more than one billion smokers in 2025, unless global action against tobacco accelerates markedly.

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