Pacific Community wants further action to reduce tobacco use

The Pacific Community says the rates of smoking around the region remain too high.

New statistics show that people in Wallis and Futuna and Kiribati are among the highest consumers of tobacco in the Pacific.

The Pacific Community's (SPC) figures show 4 percent of household expenditure goes on tobacco; in Kiribati it is 3 percent.

In Vanuatu the figure is 1.6 percent, slightly higher than Tonga (1.4 percent).

The SPC's data does not cover all Pacific nations and territories. Previous research from 2015 showed that in Tokelau 7.1 percent of household expenditure went on tobacco.

The Community says the region must continue to reduce those figures.

According to the Vanuatu Daily Post, when a worker earns 60,000 vatu on payday, about 1,000 vatu is spent on tobacco.

SPC's Non Communicable Disease Adviser, Solene Bertrand, has called on youths in Vanuatu not to smoke addictive products and for the Government to come up with relevant policies to reduce smoking.

The Government has passed a policy banning smoking in public, while increasing the price cigarette significantly to discourage smokers.

The World Health Organisation says the tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced, killing more than eight million people a year, including around 1.2 million deaths from exposure to second-hand smoke.