— About a third of the male adult global population smokes.
— Smoking related-diseases kill one in 10 adults globally, or cause four million deaths. By 2030, if current trends continue, smoking will kill one in six people.
— Every eight seconds, someone dies from tobacco use.
— Smoking is on the rise in the developing world but falling in developed nations. Among Americans, smoking rates shrunk by nearly half in three decades (from the mid-1960s to mid-1990s), falling to 23% of adults by 1997. In the developing world, tobacco consumption is rising by 3.4% per year.
— About 15 billion cigarettes are sold daily - or 10 million every minute.
— Cigarettes cause more than one in five American deaths.
— Among WHO Regions, the Western Pacific Region - which covers East Asia and the Pacific - has the highest smoking rate, with nearly two-thirds of men smoking.
— About one in three cigarettes are consumed in the Western Pacific Region.
— The tobacco market is controlled by just a few corporations - namely American, British and Japanese multinational conglomerates.

Among youth
— Among young teens (aged 13 to 15), about one in five smokes worldwide.
— Between 80,000 and 100,000 children worldwide start smoking every day - roughly half of whom live in Asia.
— Evidence shows that around 50% of those who start smoking in adolescent years go on to smoke for 15 to 20 years.
— Peer-reviewed studies show teenagers are heavily influenced by tobacco advertising.
— About a quarter of youth alive in the Western Pacific Region will die from smoking.

Health
— Half of long-term smokers will die from tobacco use. Every cigarette smoked cuts at least five minutes of life on average - about the time taken to smoke it.
— More than 4,000 toxic or carcinogenic chemicals have been found in tobacco smoke.
— One survey found that 60% of Chinese adults did not know that smoking can cause lung cancer while 96% were unaware it can cause heart disease.
– At least a quarter of all deaths from heart diseases and about three-quarters of world’s chronic bronchitis are related to smoking.
—Smoking-related diseases cost the United States more than $150 billion a year.

Source: World Health Organization. Study in 2002