More than 94% of the world’s people are not protected by laws against smoking, leaving them exposed to the biggest cause of preventable death, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday.
In a Global Tobacco Epidemic report the WHO said smokefree policies were crucial to reducing the harm caused by second-hand smoke, which it said kills around 600,000 people prematurely each year and causes crippling, disfiguring illness and economic losses reaching tens of billions of dollars.
The report found some progress had been made, with 2.3% of the world’s population, or around 154 million people, newly covered by smoke-free laws in 2008. But it warned of many more early deaths if governments did not act quickly.
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