Activities are now being conducted to prohibit smoking in the world.

Many countries have enacted and enforced tobacco-prohibition laws. Accordingly, smoking and tobacco advertising were prohibited in almost all public places.

The theme of this year's World No Tobacco Day (May 31) is “Unmasking the Appeal: countering nicotine and tobacco addiction”.

Smoking claims the lives of more people than natural calamities and accidents.

Cigarette smoke contains lots of harmful chemical substances such as nicotine, carbon monoxide, ammonia, methyl alcohol and arsenic.

Therefore, smoking can be referred to as a gradual suicide.

The problem is that most smokers do not give up smoking, although they know that it is hazardous to health.

There are several reasons for that. One of them is tobacco addiction.

Nicotine in cigarette smoke is a kind of addictive substance, and a person who once got into a habit of smoking finds it hard to quit it. And many smokers almost neglect the warning of the danger of smoking as damage by smoking occurs gradually, not immediately.

Smoking seriously damages not only human health but also ecological environment.

Bad substances in cigarette smoke pollute clean air which people breathe. Smoking generates waste such as cigarette ash, butts and packs, and discarding cigarette butts without discretion is regarded as one of the main causes of fire.

As seen above, smoking has nothing beneficial to human life.

It is becoming a social trend to provide various special services for smoking quitters and to impose a lot of restrictions on smokers.

Steps are also being taken to help people quit smoking.

The no-smoking campaign has positively been conducted in our country, too.

It has taken measures to restrict smoking in society since the late 1980s and waged a no-smoking campaign throughout the whole society since 2005, when it became a party to the framework convention on tobacco control of the WHO.

In 2020 the DPRK tobacco-prohibition law was adopted and its enforcement regulations and detailed rules were enacted.

Our Tobacco Cessation Centre puts up various printed matters and notices about the harmfulness of tobacco at places of its sale and smoking places across the country and conducts various information activities to encourage people to quit smoking.

It measures the nicotine accumulations in the human body and provides people with consultation to make them take an active part in the cessation campaign.

Such smoking cessation products as nutrition pills, nicotine-based pills, chewing gum and pipe are being produced, and books are published to help those who want to quit smoking.

Our country promotes exchanges and cooperation with the WHO in the field of tobacco control to share experience in cessation activities.

Smokers have to stop smoking for themselves and their families.