Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the tobacco epidemic is one of the most serious threats to public health that has ever emerged in the world. More than 8 million people die from it every year. More than 7 million of them are consumers and former tobacco users, more than 1.2 million are non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke.

Of the 1.3 billion tobacco users, 80% live in low- and middle-income countries, which have the highest burden of disease and death from tobacco use, ranking.kz reported.

According to the 2021 WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, among the countries of Central Asia and the EAEU, residents of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan smoke least of all: the proportion of adults who smoke daily in these countries was 4% and 9%, respectively.

In turn, Kazakhstan took 3rd place among 7 countries in the region. In the Republic of Kazakhstan, the share of daily smokers among adults was 16%. It should be noted that the situation in the republic has slightly improved: according to the previous report, the share of smokers was 17%.

Meanwhile, the share of daily smokers among adults in Kyrgyzstan was 22%, in Belarus - 23%, in Armenia - 25%. The most smoking among the countries of Central Asia and the EAEU was Russia: here the share of smokers was 27%.

Tobacco use causes significant economic damage, which is reflected, inter alia, in the significant health care costs associated with treating tobacco-related illnesses and in the loss of human capital from tobacco-related morbidity and mortality.