It’s a well-known fact that smoking increases risks for certain eye diseases like age-related macular degeneration (AMD), cataracts, and vision loss. Since 2015, promotional campaigns appear across the U.S. to warn smokers of the health risks of tobacco use and to encourage them to quit. Studies show that smokers are twice as likely to develop macular degeneration compared with a nonsmoker, while they are two to three times more likely to develop cataracts compared with a nonsmoker. A full, dilated eye exam is recommended as AMD often has no early symptoms. Worldwide, there are about 1.3 billion tobacco users, and every year about 6 million people around the world die from tobacco use. In the U.S. alone, extensive efforts are being implemented to reduce tobacco use despite the fact that cigarette smoking is declining, because the use of tobacco products has remained unchanged or has increased in recent years.
World No Tobacco Day 2017
The theme for World No Tobacco Day, 31 May 2017, is “Tobacco — a threat to development.” According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it will propose measures that governments and the public should take to promote health and development by confronting the global tobacco crisis. These include banning marketing and advertising of tobacco, promoting plain packaging of tobacco products, raising excise taxes, and making indoor public places and workplaces smoke-free. Among the campaign’s main focus is tobacco’s health and economic costs wherein countries have committed to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to implement the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), initially carried out in 2005, and reduce premature death by one-third from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) by 2030. Additional concerns emphasize the environmental impact of tobacco waste and emissions, as well as, its various threats to women, children, and livelihoods, as around 860 million adult smokers live in low- and middle-income countries.
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Sources:
World Health Organization (WHO)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – CDC.gov (www.cdc.gov) is an online source for credible health information and is the official Web site of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
