Dr Catharina Boehme, Officer-in-Charge, WHO South-East Asia
Tobacco use is a leading cause of death and disease, driving cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and respiratory illnesses, and resulting in millions of preventable deaths each year. Globally, more than 1.2 billion people use tobacco and nicotine products, including around 322 million adults and 8.6 million adolescents in the WHO South-East Asia Region, alongside over 288 million smokeless tobacco users — 80% of the global burden.
This year, World No Tobacco Day is marked under the theme "Unmasking the appeal — countering nicotine and tobacco addiction," highlighting how the tobacco and nicotine industry continues to design and market its products to attract and trap young people in a cycle of addiction. In exposing these tactics and strengthening collective action across countries and communities, a clear message is being delivered: the grip of tobacco and nicotine addiction can be broken.
Once the world's highest-burden region for tobacco use, South-East Asia has achieved the steepest declines in prevalence globally. Between 2000 and 2024, prevalence among adult men declined from 70.1% to 37.4%, and among adult women from 38.0% to 9.3%. The region is now on track to achieve a 40% relative reduction in adult tobacco use between 2010 and 2025, surpassing the 30% target under the NCD Global Action Plan, which was reached by 2021. The region’s progress is expected to account for more than half of the global reduction of 120 million tobacco users over this period. Notably, Maldives has become the first country in the world to enact a generational ban on tobacco, setting a landmark precedent for tobacco control globally.
These achievements are grounded in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), and its implementation through the WHO MPOWER measures. FCTC, the world's first global public health treaty, provides the legal foundation for comprehensive tobacco control, including Article 5.3, which obligates governments to protect public health policies from tobacco industry interference. The WHO MPOWER package translates these commitments into six proven, high-impact measures: monitoring tobacco use, protecting people from smoke, offering cessation support, warning of dangers, enforcing advertising bans, and raising taxes.
Yet the gains are fragile and the threat is evolving. Facing tighter regulation of conventional products, the tobacco and nicotine industry has shifted tactics, aggressively marketing electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches, and synthetic nicotine devices—often disguised as innovation yet engineered to sustain addiction and recruit a new generation of users. Flavours, digital advertising, and product designs calibrated to maximise appeal are the industry’s tools to target young people.
WHO calls on governments across South-East Asia to sustain and deepen the commitments that have made the region a global leader in tobacco control. Regulatory gaps around new and emerging nicotine products must be closed, including those using synthetic nicotine, nicotine salts, and analogues engineered to intensify addiction. Bans on flavours and restrictions on advertising and promotion across digital and social media platforms must be strengthened. Full implementation of the MPOWER package and the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control remains essential, as does equipping communities, and particularly young people, with the knowledge and tools to resist industry manipulation and access evidence-based cessation support.
The grip of tobacco and nicotine addiction can be broken. Unmasking the appeal is the first step.