Women and young people in developing countries are smoking in increasingly alarming numbers.

According to a study in the Lancet Journal, after years of anti-smoking measures have been encouraged across the world, there exists an alarming rate of tobacco use in developing countries.

Tobacco is likely to kill half of its users as there are low quit rates.

Women and young people are among the most addicted.

“Although 1.1 billion people have been covered by the adoption of the most effective tobacco-control policies since 2008, 83 percent of the world’s population are not covered by two or more of these policies,” Gary Giovino of the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions in New York, who led the research, told Reuters.
Such measures include legislation in some developed nations banning smoking in public places, imposing advertising bans and requiring more graphic health warnings on cigarette packets.

Tobacco remains responsible as the number one killer in world.

As developed countries in the West are seeing a small decrease the rest of the developing world, especially those who are in the lowest socio-economic strata, are seeing a dramatic increase.

Tobacco companies prey on the lack of education and misinformation about tobacco to encourage young smokers.

Tobacco has killed 50 million people in the last 10 years, and tobacco is responsible for more than 15 percent of all male deaths and 7 percent of female deaths, the new Tobacco Atlas report found.
In China, tobacco is already the number one killer – causing 1.2 million deaths a year – and that number is expected to rise to 3.5 million a year by 2030, the report said.

Smoking causes lung cancer as well as several other chronic pulmonary diseases and is a major risk factor in heart disease, the world’s number one killer.

The FDA wants to regulate electronic cigarettes as drug devices, just as nicotine gum and smoking cessation products are regulated. Electronic cigarettes are battery-powered tubes that turn nicotine-laced liquid into a vapor.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s announcement came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a decision that electronic cigarettes are not drugs or devices unless they are marketed for therapeutic purposes.

In 2009, the FDA was given the authority to regulate tobacco products that are not drugs or devices.

Electronic cigarettes, marketed under names such as NJOY, mimic the act of smoking and include nicotine, but do not emit the same type of odor or ash.