SECOND-HAND SMOKE KILLS 600,000 A YEAR

PASSIVE SMOKING KILLS 600,000 A YEAR
INCLUDING 165,000 CHILDREN, SAYS WHO

(Reuters) - Around one in a hundred deaths worldwide is due to passive smoking, which kills an estimated 600,000 people a year, World Health Organization (WHO) researchers said on Friday. In the first study to assess the global impact of second-hand smoke, WHO experts found that children are more heavily exposed to second-hand smoke than any other age-group, and around 165,000 of them a year die because of it. “Two-thirds of these deaths occur in Africa and south Asia,” the researchers, led by Annette Pruss-Ustun of the WHO in Geneva, wrote in their study. Children’s exposure to second-hand smoke is most likely to happen at home, and the double blow of infectious diseases and tobacco “seems to be a deadly combination for children in these regions,” they said. Worldwide, 40 % of children, 33 % of non-smoking men and 35 % non-smoking women were exposed to second-hand smoke. This exposure has caused 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 from lower respiratory infections, 36,900 from asthma and 21,400 from lung cancer.

For the full impact of smoking, these deaths should be added to the estimated 5.1 million deaths a year attributable to active tobacco use, the researchers said. While deaths due to passive smoking in children were skewed toward poor and middle-income countries, deaths in adults were spread across countries at all income levels.

In Europe’s high-income countries, only 71 child deaths occurred, while 35,388 deaths were in adults. Yet in the countries assessed in Africa, an estimated 43,375 deaths due to passive smoking were in children compared with 9,514 in adults.



The study estimates that in 2004 passive smoking was responsible for the demise of over 600,000 people. Children are more prone and are deeply exposed to secondhand smoke compared with other age group, and that about 165,000 children die each year because of passive smoke. Also, the study said that only 7,4% of the world’s population live in countries with laws to prevent smoking in public. These anti-tobacco laws are fully present only in the richer countries but they are not available in developing countries or the world's poorest regions. This would not happen if society in general has higher education and especially political leaders received good advice from people well versed in Vedic knowledge.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

It is stated, parama-kāruniko vedah - “Vedic knowledge is supremely merciful” - because it engages the animalistic human beings in a gradual process of purification that culminates in full consciousness of Lord Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. ... The majority of human beings are not able to suddenly give up material sense gratification, even though they understand from Vedic literature that such sense gratification causes a pernicious future effect. We have practical experience in the Western countries that when the government informed the citizens that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer, most people were unable to give up their smoking habit. Therefore, the Vedic literature prescribes a gradual process of purification in which the conditioned soul learns to offer the results of his material activities to the Supreme Lord, thus spiritualizing those activities.

Purports to the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, Canto 11: “General History”
Chapter 3: “Liberation from the Illusory Energy”- Verse 46.
By the humble servants of HDG A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda
New Gokula - South American pilgrimage site,
State of Sao Paulo, Brazil, March, 1982.
Bhaktivedanta VedaBase - http://srimadbhagavatam.com/sb/11/en