Joins us and say ‘No Tobacco’

World No Tobacco Day is one of many other world health awareness days throughout the year organized by the WHO.

“Tobacco industry interference” is the theme of this year’s World No Tobacco Day. The campaign will focus on the need to expose and counter the tobacco industry's brazen and increasingly aggressive attempts to undermine the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) because of the serious danger they pose to public health.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) is the world's foremost tobacco control instrument. The first treaty ever negotiated under the auspices of WHO, it represents a signal achievement in the advancement of public health. In force only since 2005, it is already one of the most rapidly and widely embraced treaties in the history of the United Nations, with more than 170 Parties.

As more and more countries move to fully meet their obligations under the WHO FCTC, the tobacco industry's efforts to undermine the treaty are becoming more and more energetic.
Meanwhile, the industry's attempts to undermine the treaty continue on other fronts, particularly with regard to countries' attempts to ban smoking in enclosed public places and to ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

World No Tobacco Day 2012 will educate policy-makers and the general public about the tobacco industry's nefarious and harmful tactics.

It will also be in keeping with the letter and the spirit of the WHO FCTC. The preamble of the treaty recognizes "the need to be alert to any efforts by the tobacco industry to undermine or subvert tobacco control efforts and the need to be informed of activities of the tobacco industry that have a negative impact on tobacco control efforts".

Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death. This year, more than 5 million people will die from a tobacco-related heart attack, stroke, cancer, lung ailment or other disease. That does not include the more than 600,000 people – more than a quarter of them children – who will die from exposure to second-hand smoke. The annual death toll from the global epidemic of tobacco use could rise to 8 million by 2030. Having killed 100 million people during the 20th century, tobacco use could kill 1 billion during the 21st century.

Azerbaijan ratified the WHO FCTC on 2005. At the present Parliament of the Azerbaijan Republic has been developing a new law on Tobacco Control.

On World No Tobacco Day 2012, and throughout the following year, WHO will urge countries to put the fight against tobacco industry interference at the heart of their efforts to control the global tobacco epidemic.

In 1987, the World Health Assembly of the WHO passed Resolution, calling for April 7, 1988 to be "a world no-smoking day" and called for.  April 7, 1988 was the 40th anniversary of the WHO. The objective of the day was to urge tobacco users worldwide to abstain from using tobacco products for 24 hours, an action they hoped would provide assistance for those trying to quit. Since 1988, World No Day has been celebrated on the 31st of May annually. World No Tobacco Day is a worldwide opportunity to focus on a different tobacco-related theme.


/Today.Az/