Los Angeles Times: The global grip of cigarette smoking
Thomas Bollyky, senior fellow for global health, economics and development at the Council on Foreign Relations

“… [The] 1964 surgeon general’s report on smoking and health spurred profound and lasting changes in tobacco use and policies in the United States, but its call to action has gone unfulfilled internationally. In the intervening decades, smoking has expanded in developing countries and has had devastating consequences for the world’s poor. … [T]obacco use, which annually kills more people worldwide than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, is not even a line item in the $8 billion U.S. global health budget. … We can do better, at little cost. The mandate and resources of federal agencies should be increased to help developing countries build their own programs to tax and regulate tobacco, and to warn against smoking. Modest aid would go a long way; ultimately, those programs would generate sufficient revenues to be self-supporting…” (1/21).