World No Tobacco Day is a day for people, non-governmental organizations and governments organize various activities to make people aware of the health problems that tobacco use can cause. These activities include:
Public marches and demonstrations, often with vivid banners.
Advertising campaigns and educational programs.
People going into public places to encourage people to stop smoking.
The introduction of bans on smoking in particular places or types of advertising.
Meetings for anti-tobacco campaigners.
The Hellenic Pulmonary Society emphasises smoking prevention and cessation programs as it estimates that coupled with the implementation of basic anti-smoking policies this can make a significant contribution to the transformation of Greek culture and reduce the high burden of morbidity and mortality due to smoking.
In this context, it has drawn up a list of Smoking Intervention Centres that operate in almost all Greek cities in state hospitals with the aim of:
-The treatment of smokers from smoking disease.
-To inform both smokers and the general public about the effects of smoking on health.
-The prevention of smoking in sensitive populations, such as pupils/teenagers / young people (information programs in schools, social structures, etc.)
Every minute, smokers get through nearly 11 million cigarettes and 10 die from the habit, experts say, in an industry that generates billions of dollars. Here are some facts and figures ahead of the UN’s World No Tobacco Day: There are around one billion smokers in the world, about a seventh of the global population, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) and other estimates. China has the highest number: of its population of 1.3 billion, about 315 million are smokers and they consume more than a third of the world’s cigarettes, the WHO said in a report last year.
Indonesia has the highest proportion of smokers at 76 percent of men aged over 15.
About 80 percent of the world’s smokers live in low- and middle-income countries and 226 million of them are considered poor.
A study published in The Lancet medical journal in April 2017 says the percentage of people using tobacco every day has dropped in 25 years.
