Africa will be the world’s ashtray if big tobacco is able to get its way
For decades, smoking has been on the rise, driving more than 100m deaths in the 20th century alone and creating health and other costs of about $1,500bn a year that have hampering global growth. According to a report from the global health policy organisation Vital Strategies and the University of Illinois Chicago in the latest edition of the Tobacco Atlas, the era of big tobacco is coming to an end: there is an unequivocal drop in global smoking rates, to 19.6% in 2019 from 22.6% in 2007.
Concealed in the figures, however, is a plan to turn tobacco back into a growth industry by focusing on Africa.
Global progress against the “tobacco epidemic” is driven by large declines mostly in nations that have raised taxes on tobacco, limited marketing, mounted hard-hitting public information campaigns, and banned smoking in many public places. Our research shows that the decline in smoking in Africa has been small, and adult prevalence increased in 10 of the continent’s countries between 1990 and 2019.
The human toll of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is huge and rising. These illnesses end the lives of approximately 41 million of the 56 million people who die every year – and three quarters of them are in the developing world.
NCDs are simply that; unlike, say, a virus, you can’t catch them. Instead, they are caused by a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental and behavioural factors. The main types are cancers, chronic respiratory illnesses, diabetes and cardiovascular disease – heart attacks and stroke. Approximately 80% are preventable, and all are on the rise, spreading inexorably around the world as ageing populations and lifestyles pushed by economic growth and urbanisation make being unhealthy a global
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