Cigarette is responsible for 60,000 deaths each year

Tehran – The Iranian Anti-Smoking Association has announced about 60,000 smoking-related deaths each year.

Ninety percent of lung cancers develop in people who smoke cigarettes or are exposed to second-hand smoke, the report said, the ISNA news agency reported on Sunday.

Smoking two cigarettes or other tobacco products in a confined space can increase the level of pollution 10 times over the most polluted areas of Tehran, warned the report.

In Iran, about 12% of the population aged 15 to 69 consume tobacco. Smokers spend 100 billion rials (about 2.4 million dollars) every day on cigarettes and twice as much as the amount spent on tobacco-related diseases each year.

In mid-January, Abdolrahman Rostamian, rector of social affairs at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences, said that smoking in Iran had increased seven-fold in the last decade, from 2,000 to 15,000 tonnes.

In most countries, tariffs on tobacco can reach 75%, but in Iran they are only 20%. This is one of the issues on which members of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) should pay special attention, he said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that tobacco kills up to half of its users. Tobacco kills more than 7 million people each year. More than 6 million of these deaths are due to the direct use of tobacco, while approximately 890,000 are due to the exposure of non-smokers to second-hand smoke. About 80% of the world's 1.1 billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries.

Studies show that few people understand the specific risks of smoking for health. For example, a 2009 survey in China found that only 38% of smokers knew that smoking caused coronary heart disease and 27% knew it caused stroke.

Many smokers who are aware of the dangers of smoking most want to quit smoking. The tips and medications can more than double the chances of success of a smoker who is trying to quit smoking.

MQ / MG