Washington, March 18, 1999--Tobacco control is a global challenge and a cultural struggle against tobacco companies that prey on adolescents to increase sales, WHO Director-General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland said today in opening the International Policy Conference on Children and Tobacco.
"Tobacco burdens our health systems. It costs taxpayers money. It hampers the productivity of our economies. Tobacco obviously provides economic benefits to producers. But solid economic analysis clearly concludes that the costs of tobacco exceed by far its estimated economic benefits," she said.
In the keynote address at the conference, which brought together legislators, ministers of health, and other political leaders from more than 30 countries to identify key policies to cut tobacco use among children, Dr. Brundtland said: "We have evidence to show that positive results come from concerted action on several fronts: tobacco advertising bans, increases in taxation, and a high level of public awareness."
Dr. Brundtland said world leaders "should really worry" about the growth in tobacco consumption, adding, "Our main battlefield on children and tobacco is in that strange, exhilarating and often confusing landscape called adolescence. We must enter the discotheques, the schools and the sports arenas. In many countries, cigarettes are given out for free on the dance floors. We have to win these spaces back." Awareness, action, assistance and alliances are needed to "counter fiction with fact, we have to dispel ignorance with scientific evidence and we have to tackle inertia with the simple message that tobacco kills," she added.
Governments may face a backlash from decisive anti-tobacco action, but the political leadership "must be united and committed to take the battles," she said. Referring to tobacco production and employment, Dr. Brundtland said, "We are not attacking those who, by tradition or by lack of other suitable crops, grow tobacco in their fields. We are not blaming those thousands who work in tobacco plants because it is the best -- or the only -- steady job in their hometown. We do care about their future livelihood in our fight against tobacco."
With current smoking patterns, some 500 million people alive today will eventually be killed by tobacco, she said. "Worldwide mortality from tobacco is likely to rise from about 4 million deaths a year in 1998 to about 10 million a year in 2030," over 70 percent in the developing world. "By 2020, smoking will cause about one in three of all adult deaths, up from one in six adult deaths in 1990,"she said.
"The tobacco epidemic is a communicated disease. It is communicated through advertising, through the example of smokers and through the smoke to which non-smokers -- especially children -- are exposed. Our job is to immunize people against this epidemic," she said. To change the trends, Dr. Brundtland noted, "We need to get smokers to quit and non-smokers not to pick up the addictive habit."
Dr. Brundtland asked the assembled leaders to act against tobacco. "Those actions, both personal and official, will decide if tobacco shall claim new millions of victims in your home countries. Those actions will help prevent the cost of treating hundreds of thousands of cancer and heart disease patients from breaking the back of your health systems in the coming decades," she said.