India is among 60 countries likely to achieve the target of a 30% reduction in tobacco use by 2025, revealed the fourth World Health Organization′s global tobacco trends report.

The report stated that the number of tobacco users has declined worldwide to 1.30 billion in 2020 from 1.32 billion in 2015. The decline is expected to continue to 1.27 billion by the year 2025. The fastest rate of decline has been observed in the WHO South-East Asia Region, where the average prevalence of smoking among men has dropped from 50% in 2000 to 25% in 2020. Tobacco smoking among women has shown a sharp drop from 8.9% in 2000 to 1.6% in 2020.

At present, the region has the highest rates of tobacco use, with around 29% of its population using it. There are 266 million smokeless tobacco users in the region out of the 355 million worldwide… (ET Healthworld – IANS, November 17, 2021)