Page 124 - TAIWAN TOBACCO CONTROL ANNUAL REPORT 2019

122 5. Direction of future efforts: Tobacco control education will focus on: (1) Establishing a monitoring platform for tobacco control in Chinese films; (2) Inter-organizational cooperation with NGOs active in the fields of child, parent, teacher, and women related issues; (3) The results of long-term monitoring of tobacco product information must be constantly disclosed and provided to multimedia producers; (4) Improving empirical research and scientific evidence: The link between evidences of the impact of audio-visual content on children; (5) organizing conferences for media initiatives and help raise media attention; (6) make good use of key opinion leaders and the dedicated efforts of anti-smoking image workers, in order to assist the spread of positive anti-smoking messages. Concrete suggestions for control, management, and education on digital contents include the following: (1) Management of social network messages via the free Facebook software crown tangle. (2) Image identification via Google coupled with requests to businesses to remove violating content. (3) Creation of content, filming popular science programmes or positive and negative documentaries to help people clarify any ambiguities. (4) Utilization of conversion ads to change the image of tobacco products and make "No Smoking" cool. (5) Encouragement of self-discipline or adding of warning messages by businesses. Tobacco Consumption Monitoring Global tobacco consumption grew every year with the invention and mass production of paper- rolled cigarettes in 1881. Although global smoking rates experienced little change or exhibited signs of decrease in recent years, the growth of the human population meant that the total number of smokers has continued to grow. According to the Tobacco Atlas 2014, about 20% of the world’s adults smoke. In 2009, the value of tobacco products reached nearly NTD 5.9 trillion for a 10-year growth of 13%. In the past, tobacco consumption was highest for countries with high income. However, target sales, higher social acceptance, continued economic development, and population growth meant that tobacco consumption in middle-and low- income countries are rising as well. From 1990 to 2009, tobacco consumption in western European countries decreased by 26%. However, tobacco consumption in Middle East and Africa grew by 57%. This change was due to increasing awareness of tobacco hazards of people living in high income countries. Their governments have also continued to implement tobacco control policies and laws. Globally speaking, growths of tobacco consumption in middle-and low- income countries were more than enough to make up for losses of tobacco consumption in high income countries. With the implementation of the tobacco health and welfare surcharge in Taiwan, the tobacco control work was able to be executed thoroughly, and the smoking rate of adult male dropped from 48.2% in 2002 to 23.4% in 2018 while the smoking rate of adult female also dropped to around 2%~5%. The daily tobacco consumption of smokers above the age of 18 decreased from 19 cigarettes in 2008 to 17.3 cigarettes in 2016. Except for the slight increase in 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2015, the rates all showed decreasing trends; However, an increase to 18.9 cigarettes was recorded in 2018, and the estimated number of cigarettes per year of adults above the age of 18 dropped from 1,503 in 2008 to 887 cigarettes in 2018.(Fig. 3-22).With 2018, the number of cigarettes per person per person who is over 15 years old is 19.3 per day; it is estimated that in 2018, the number of cigarettes per person per year is 895 (Fig. 3-23). However, since the data of the past smoking amount of the ex-smokers and current smokers are unavailable, the quantity may have been underestimated.