World No Tobacco Day 2010

The World Health Organization (WHO) selects "Gender and tobacco with an emphasis on marketing to women" as the theme for the next World No Tobacco Day, which will take place on 31 May 2010.

Controlling the epidemic of tobacco among women is an important part of any comprehensive tobacco control strategy. World No Tobacco Day 2010 will be designed to draw particular attention to the harmful effects of tobacco marketing towards women and girls. It will also highlight the need for the nearly 170 Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control to ban all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship in accordance with their constitutions or constitutional principles.

Women comprise about 20% of the world's more than 1 billion smokers. However, this figure is bound to increase. Male rates of smoking have peaked, while female rates are on the rise. Women are a major target of opportunity for the tobacco industry, which needs to recruit new users to replace the nearly half of current users who will die prematurely from tobacco-related diseases.

Especially troubling is the rising prevalence of tobacco use among girls. The new WHO report, Women and health: today's evidence, tomorrow's agenda, points to evidence that tobacco advertising increasingly targets girls. Data from 151 countries show that about 7% of adolescent girls smoke cigarettes as opposed to 12% of adolescent boys. In some countries, almost as many girls smoke as boys.

World No Tobacco Day 2010 will give overdue recognition to the importance of controlling the epidemic of tobacco among women. As WHO Director-General Margaret Chan wrote in the aforementioned report, "protecting and promoting the health of women is crucial to health and development – not only for the citizens of today but also for those of future generations".

The WHO Framework Convention, which took effect in 2005, expresses alarm at "the increase in smoking and other forms of tobacco consumption by women and young girls worldwide".

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