As the world marks World No Tobacco Day on Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) has sounded the alarm about tobacco's negative impact on the environment and human health, calling for action to shape the business and further curb the devastation it causes.
Who said industry costs the world more than 8 million lives, 600 million trees, 200,000 hectares of land, 22 billion tons of water and 84 million tons of greenhouse gases every year. Most tobacco is grown in low- and middle-income countries, where water and farmland are often short-lived to feed the population. Instead, they are used to grow deadly tobacco crops while at the same time clearing much of the forest land.
According to the WHO report Tobacco, Poisoning Our Planet, industry's carbon footprint from production, processing and transport is one-fifth of the greenhouse gases produced by the commercial airline industry each year and contributes to global warming
"Tobacco products are the dirtiest product on the planet and contain more than 7,000 toxic chemicals that leach into our environment when discarded," said WHO Director for Health Promotion Dr. Rüdiger Krech, in response to the new report.
According to Krech, products like cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, and electronic cigarettes contribute to the accumulation of plastic pollutants.
Cigarette filters contain microplastics and are the second largest source of plastic pollution in the world. There is no evidence that filters have any proven health benefits, despite being marketed by tobacco companies.
“WHO is urging policymakers to treat cigarette filters like the single-use plastics they are and consider banning them to protect public health and the environment.“
The cost of cleaning up messy tobacco products falls on the taxpayer rather than the company that caused the problem. Every year, China spends US$2.6 billion, and each Asian nation spends US$766. million. Brazil and Germany have a reference price of more than $200 million (see table below for similar estimates), France and Spain, but cities like San Francisco, the Golden State within the United States, have also taken positions.
They need to be backed by successfully enforced extended producer liability legislation that supports the pollution principle, which holds industry responsible for cleaning up the pollutants it produces.
The WHO also called on countries and cities to follow suit by helping tobacco farmers switch to many agricultural crops, enacting robust tobacco taxes (which would come with an environmental tax), and helping people quit smoking. .