WHO says 1 in 5 adults are still addicted to tobacco

GENEVA (dpa)

The world is smoking less, but the tobacco epidemic is far from over, the World Health Organis ation (WHO) said on Monday.

A new WHO global report shows the number of tobacco users has dropped from 1.38 billion in 2000 to 1.2 billion in 2024. Since 2010, the number of people using tobacco has declined by 120 million - a 27% drop in relative terms.

But the WHO warned that 1 in 5 adults worldwide are currently still addicted to tobacco, fuelling millions of preventable deaths every year.

"Millions of people are stopping, or not taking up, tobacco use thanks to tobacco control efforts by countries around the world," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement marking the organisation's tobacco trends report.

According to the WHO, the decline in tobacco consumption is primarily due to major successes in South East Asia. There, the proportion of men smoking in the population has halved since 2000.