Thread by @WHOEMRO

Annually, the tobacco industry costs the world:

🔵600 million trees
🔵200 000 hectares of land
🔵22 billion tonnes of water
🔵84 million tonnes of CO2.
🔵& more than 8 million human lives

#SayNoToTobacco! It threatens our environment and our health.

Tobacco takes up to 9 months to mature, making it difficult for smallholder farmers to grow food crops within the same year.

It also degrades the soil, depletes its essential nutrients and decreases its fertility, making it difficult to grow food.

#NoTobacco #TobaccoExposed

349M people🌍 are facing acute food insecurity, many of them living in low & middle-income countries where tobacco cultivation has increased in the last decade.

Planting tobacco:
🔴reduces soil fertility & productivity
🔴limits capacity to grow other crops
🔴leads to more hunger

Planting tobacco threatens food security and nutrition in many ways.

It leads to:
🔴scarcity of quality land
🔴limited choice of alternatives
🔴degradation of soil
🔴decreases crop intensity

#NoTobacco #TobaccoExposed #SayNoToTobacco

1⃣Scarcity of quality land Low and middle income-countries are increasingly using quality land to grow tobacco.

#NoTobacco #TobaccoExposed #SayNoToTobacco

2⃣Limited choice of alternatives

Sometimes, the absence of strongly assured markets limits the choice of alternative crops.

#NoTobacco #TobaccoExposed #SayNoToTobacco

3⃣Degrading of soil

Intercropping, growing two or more proximate crops, depletes soil of essential nutrients for productive farming.

The chemicals required to grow tobacco also degrade the soil.

#NoTobacco #TobaccoExposed #SayNoToTobacco

4⃣Crop intensity

Tobacco crop takes up to 9 months to mature, making it hard for smallholder farmers to grow food crops within the same year.

#NoTobacco #TobaccoExposed #SayNoToTobacco

25% of tobacco farmers absorb nicotine while handling green tobacco leaves and get nicotine poisoning.

A tobacco farmer inhales tobacco dust equivalent to 50 cigarettes a day, leading to health challenges.

The chemicals on their bodies and clothes harm their families too.

Growing tobacco harms children!

Children’s body weight is small and their skin absorbs high amounts of nicotine when handling green #tobacco leaves

While stocking at home & rolling bidis, they inhale the tobacco dust which results in respiratory diseases and other health issues

The expensive process of tobacco farming traps farmers into debt by transnational tobacco companies or intermediary traders.

Studies show that planting tobacco is less profitable for farmers than other crops.

#NoTobacco #TobaccoExposed

Growing tobacco impacts the household income of farmers:
🚭Transnational tobacco companies under-grade tobacco leaves and underprice them to disadvantage the farmers

🚭The profit of growing tobacco excludes the expensive costs of seeds, fertilizers and renting or buying land.

@WHO urges countries and cities to:

🔵give support to tobacco farmers to switch to sustainable crops

🔵implement strong tobacco taxes (that could also include an environmental tax)

🔵and offer support services to help people quit tobacco