Initiatives have slashed number of Brazil’s smokers by 40%

The implementation of the measures established by the International Treaty for Tobacco Control—like the increase in prices and taxes—have reduced the number of smokers in the country by 40 percent, according to Brazil’s National Cancer Institute (Inca) and Tania Cavalcante, executive secretary of the National Commission for the Implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Sanitary warnings, she said, also played a significant role in the process, as well as the prohibition of flavored cigarettes and ment.

“Even though Brazil reduced the prevalence of smokers to 9.3 percent, smokers total 19 million in absolute , so we need to help them quit. Many need treatment, which is offered by public hospitals. We still have a large number of challenges to tackle, but we have no ment and promotion of tobacco products,” she said at a symposium on smoking.

The measures adopted, she said, including banning smoking indoors are showing their predicted effects and changing society’s notion that smoking is not glamorous but rather a public health problem. “If we ask any child or teenager today, they know it, and they’re the ones urging their parents and grandparents to quit.”

The preventive initiatives against smoking, Cavalcante noted, were not adopted earlier because of pressure from the tobacco industry, as several measures hinge on legislation. “If we had implemented everything we have today before, we’d have fewer smokers, deaths, and diseases. Today, smoking-related deaths total 157 thousand a year, all of which preventable, with over $14.3 billion spent on treating diseases every year, while companies are making profit.”