Categories
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· International
· Teen Smoking/Youth
· Tobacco Control
non-USA, by Country
· Africa
· Lebanon
· Mid-east
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Smoking-related admissions cost lebanon’s hospitals $900 million a year
Jump to full article: Beirut Daily Star (lb), 2009-10-31
Author: Dalila Mahdawi Daily Star staff
Intro: Lebanese health experts calling for a comprehensive smoking ban have been given additional impetus to their cause after a major international public affairs magazine published a major study warning youth smoking rates were increasing dangerously. In a report published earlier this month by the Economist Intelligence Unit with sponsorship from international pharmaceutical company Pfizer, researchers warned that cheap and easily accessible tobacco was driving Lebanon's youth to take up smoking, a habit many will continue into adulthood.
The 28-page report, entitled "Tomorrow's regular customers? Stamping out tobacco use in the Middle East and Africa," also noted that while many countries were now introducing smoking bans in public places, the developing world was seeing a steady increase in smokers, accounting for some 70 percent of the world's total smokers in 2005, compared to about 40 percent in 1970.
The developing world will thus pay the highest price for tobacco use: the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that by 2030, 80 percent of tobacco-related deaths will occur in low- to middle-income countries, the report said.
In Lebanon, over 3,500 people die each year because of tobacco exposure at a cost of around $900 million, according to the Health Ministry.
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