Tobacco Control

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The World Heart Federation Roadmap for Reducing Cardiovascular Mortality Through Tobacco Control identifies roadblocks and suggests potential solutions to improve cardiovascular health and help reach the target set out in the Sustainable Development Goals: achieve a 30% reduction in NCDs, including CVD, by 2030.

This WHF Roadmap has been written by eight experts from around the world: Alice Grainger Gasser, Cassandra Welch, Monika Arora, Rohan Greenland, Lubna Bhatti, Luminita Sanda, Rob Moodie, Eduardo Bianco.

A Roadmap is a framework to identify roadblocks and suggest potential solutions on the road to 2030. Global Roadmaps have been developed by worldwide experts to detect the problems and offer solutions on specific topics impacting cardiovascular mortality.

This Roadmap was launched on 19 March 2014 at the World Conference on Tobacco Or Health (WCTOH), and published in Global Heart.

Overview

WHF has developed this roadmap on Reducing Cardiovascular Mortality through Tobacco Control with experts and its members to help identify the roadblocks which are currently preventing the 25by25 targets being achieved.

Challenges

Tobacco kills nearly six million people a year: five million from smoking and 600,000 from secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure. Cigarette smoke includes hundreds of toxins. Globally, tobacco use accounts for some 10 percent of all cardiovascular disease deaths; in some regions the figure reaches 25-30 percent. In the United States, more smokers are killed by cardiovascular disease than lung cancer.

Target

The WHO Global Action Plan (GAP) for the Prevention and Control of NCD’s 2013-2020 establishes a target of 30% relative reduction in prevalence of current tobacco use in persons aged 15 years or older by 2025.

Definition

There is no safe cigarette, low-tar, and “light” cigarettes do not reduce users’ risk of death and disease. The damage from cigarette smoking is immediate, and there is no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke. In 2004, over 87 percent of the estimated 430,000 worldwide adult deaths caused by secondhand smoke were attributed to ischaemic heart disease. People who smoke present with myocardial infarction at a younger age than either nonsmokers or those who have quit, augmenting the importance of tobacco cessation for decreasing premature CVD mortality. The reduction in smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke has contributed to the decline in death rates from CVD in the U.S. since the 1960’s. It has been argued that tobacco addiction is the most significant modifiable cardiovascular risk factor.