The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) on Tuesday said it is time to hold individual smokers to account for polluting the planet and “leaving mountains of waste to drive global warming.”
The globalist body also more broadly accused the industry of causing widespread deforestation, diverting badly needed land and water in poor countries away from food production, spewing out plastic and chemical waste as well as emitting millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The litany of sins can be found in a report, “Tobacco: poisoning our planet”, which looks at the impacts of the whole cycle, from the growth of plants to the manufacturing of tobacco products, to consumption and waste.
Choosing World No Tobacco Day to act, the U.N. agency demands the tobacco industry foot the bill for the clean-up at the same time government at all levels move against those who smoke – even in their own home.
While tobacco’s health impacts have been well documented for decades — with smoking still causing more than eight million deaths worldwide every year — the report focuses on its broader environmental consequences.
The findings are “quite devastating,” Ruediger Krech, W.H.O. director of health promotion, told AFP, slamming the industry as “one of the biggest polluters that we know of.”
Medical students and staff from a hospital with placards during an awareness rally against the use of tobacco on World No Tobacco Day in Hyderabad on May 31, 2022. (NOAH SEELAM/AFP via Getty)
The industry is responsible for the loss of some 600 million trees each year, while tobacco growing and production uses 200,000 hectares of land and 22 billion tonnes of water annually, the report found.
It also emits around 84 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, it said.
Some countries have already moved to make smoking less attractive by imposing “sin taxes” and raising the age limit while banning outright some types, as Breitbart News reported.
The legal age of smoking tobacco in Britain could reportedly be raised to 21 under moves from the U.K.’s Conservative government announced earlier this month.
In the hopes of transitioning into a smoke-free nation by the end of the decade, a “radical” review commissioned by Health Secretary Sajid Javid could see Boris Johnson’s government recommend raising the legal age of smoking from 18 to 21.