The World Health Organisation accused the industry of causing widespread deforestation, diverting badly needed land and water in poor countries away from food production, spewing out plastic and chemical waste as well as emitting millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide.
While tobacco's health impacts have been well documented for decades — with smoking still causing more than eight million deaths worldwide every year — the report focuses on its broader environmental consequences. He pointed out that each one of the estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts that end up in our oceans, rivers, sidewalks and beaches every year can pollute 100 litres of water.
Most tobacco is grown in poorer countries, where water and farmland are often in short supply, and where such crops are often grown at the expense of vital food production, the report said. Cigarette filters contain microplastics — the tiny fragments that have been detected in every ocean and even at the bottom of the world's deepest trench — and make up the second-highest form of plastic pollution worldwide, the report said.
It also decried that taxpayers around the world had been covering the towering costs of cleaning up the tobacco industry's mess.