We meet smokers everywhere. There are 6.5 billion people in the world, and about 1.2 billion of them are smokers, which make up to 20 percent of the world's total population.
Smoking is very harmful. First, smoking costs a great deal of money. It wastes 200 billion dollars each year in the world. Second,smoking does harm to the health of smokers and even the people near them. About 3 million people die of diseases caused by smoking every year.
Luckily, more and more people have come to realize the great harm of smoking. To our delight the total amount of world tobacco production has dropped from over 14 billion pounds in 2000 to 7 billion pounds in 2003. It is certain that the number of smokers will further decrease gradually.