Tobacco Use in OIC Countries: Prospects and Challenges
Date: 01 March 2010

Tobacco epidemic is becoming an important issue to be tackled nationally in many countries with its growing use across the world and global efforts to prevent tobacco use. Currently, tobacco use mainly consists of cigarettes. Yet, there are many other consumable products made from tobacco. These include chewing tobacco, cigars, dipping tobacco and dissolvable tobacco among others. Although using cigarettes is widely recognized to cause serious damage to human health, impact of using other tobacco products cannot be neglected in the same way, thus should also be given consideration for making an analysis about use of tobacco products in general whether it be for a country or a region.

Generally speaking, tobacco use is a common social problem globally although its prevalence may vary from one region to another. Thus, it continues to be serious threat for many countries around the world as most of them have not been able to prevent it through traditionally known measures such as restriction of tobacco to young people or measures which proved to be insufficient such as restrictions on its advertisement. Nevertheless, its use by people has been proven to endanger their health, thus it has received much attention globally and global efforts to prevent tobacco use are underway with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in the forefront. The FCTC process is expected to accelerate the implementation of effective programs and policies to reduce and monitor tobacco use.

Online Electronic Version

Tobacco Use in OIC Countries: Prospects and Challenges (English)