May 31 is World No-Tobacco Day (WNTD) 2000. This year's theme, "Entertainment
and Tobacco Promotion---Countering the Deception," intends to raise awareness of the
tobacco industry's global marketing practices and to mobilize action to counter the
industry's recruitment of new customers through glamorizing tobacco use in films, music, art,
and sports. Worldwide, tobacco use will cause an estimated 10 million deaths annually by
2030 (1). Each day, the tobacco industry must recruit 11,000 new users to replace smokers
who die (2).
To build global support for tobacco-control measures, the World Health
Organization (WHO) has developed the "Tobacco Kills---Don't Be Duped" media initiative. This
effort includes distribution of products with the "Bob'' image (Figure 1), public
service announcements featuring a super model and pop group, and a video with
entertainers, artists, and sports figures endorsing antitobacco messages. Local and regional
WNTD events will take place around the world, especially in countries where tobacco
marketing remains largely unregulated.
Additional information about World No-Tobacco Day 2000 is available at WHO's
World-Wide Web site, http://www.who.int/toh/media/wntd2000/wntd2000.htm*, and at CDC's
Office on Smoking and Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and
Health Promotion site, http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco,
or telephone (800) 232-1311.
References
World Health Organization. Combating the tobacco epidemic. In: World
Health Organization's world health report 1999. Geneva, Switzerland: World
Health Organization;1999:6579.
* References to sites of non-CDC organizations on the World-Wide Web are provided as
a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply endorsement of
these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content of pages found at these sites.
Disclaimer
All MMWR HTML versions of articles are electronic conversions from ASCII text
into HTML. This conversion may have resulted in character translation or format errors in the HTML version.
Users should not rely on this HTML document, but are referred to the electronic PDF version and/or
the original MMWR paper copy for the official text, figures, and tables.
An original paper copy of this issue can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents,
U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC 20402-9371; telephone: (202) 512-1800.
Contact GPO for current prices.
**Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to
mmwrq@cdc.gov.
