Being Health For Wealth: World No Tobacco Day 2012

On this year's World No Tobacco Day, which was celebrated on 31st May 2012, the main objective behind the campaign would be to put the sportlight on the tobbaco industry's continued efforts to undermine the policies from WHO FCTC, which states "the need to be alert to any efforts by the tobacco industry to undermine or subvert tobacco control efforts and the need to be informed of activities of the tobacco industriey that have a negative impact on tobacco efforts".

One good example of the tobacco industry's unwillingness to adhere to the policies was to stop the progress for pictorial health warnings on cigarette boxes; they ave opted to sue countries under bilateral investment treaties that claim the warning is intruding in their branding.

The world No Tobacco Day 2012 is a platform to train policy-makers and the public of these harmfull tactics, and throughout the following year, WHO will advocate countries to put the fight against tobacco industry on centre stage to have a better control on the epidemic.

Facts:

Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of death.
6 million people die each year due to the global tobacco epidemic.
Of which 600,000 will die from second hand smoke.
If the tobacco epidemic continues, by 2030 it will kill 8 million people globally.