‘Turning point’ as number of male smokers drops

The number of male tobacco users is falling for the first time, the World Health Organization said yesterday, hailing a “major shift” in efforts to kick the world’s deadly tobacco addiction.

The number of women and girls who use tobacco products has been steadily declining for years. But tobacco use among males -- who account for the overwhelming majority of smokers -- has until now been expanding.

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In a new report, the UN health agency hailed the beginning decline as a powerful indication that anti-smoking campaigns around the globe had begun to pay off.

But it warned that far more was needed to kick the addiction, which is estimated to kill some eight million people each year.

For the past two decades, global tobacco use has been slowly dwindling, from 1.397 billion users in 2000 to 1.337 billion in 2018. This means around 60 million fewer people were using tobacco products, even as the global populations has swelled.

But that reduction has been strongly driven by declines in the number of women and girls using tobacco products, WHO said, with the number dropping from 346 million in 2000 to 244 million last year.

Over the same period, the number of male tobacco users rose by around 40 million, from 1.05 billion to 1.093 billion.

But men, who today account for more than 80 percent of all tobacco users, are finally beginning to kick the habit.

It shows that by 2020, the ranks of male users will shrink by two million people compared to last year’s number, and by 2025, there are projected to be six million fewer male tobacco users than in 2018, so around 1.087 billion.