Health officials in Bangladesh said the country is unlikely to meet its smoking reduction goal of 40% by 2030, as suggested by the World Health Organization. According to the Bangladesh Medical University (BMU), smoking in the country declined 13% between 2009 and 2022, only a third of its ultimate goal.
M Mostafa Zaman, executive editor of BMU Journal, said overall tobacco use dropped from 54% to 47% over that time, but that 22% of the population still smokes cigarettes and 31% use smokeless tobacco. Between 2017 and 2022, the use of e-cigarettes increased from 3.6% to 14.6%.
Shafiun Nahin Shimul, a professor at the Institute of Health Economics at Dhaka University, however, said the data set being used is extremely limited, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions from either the figures or the study’s methodology. He said that while the analysis suggests that tobacco consumption has fallen, the National Board of Revenue statistics indicate cigarette sales are on the rise as the use of bidi (a kind of cheap cigarette) has decreased compared to cigarettes.
