Thank you very much. Mesdames and Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning. I'm honoured to be here today representing Canadians on World No-Tobacco Day. Marking World No-Tobacco Day in conjunction with Child Health 2000, raises the profile of this very important international tobacco control event and reemphasizes the need to reduce tobacco use by young people. I'm also pleased to be here with Secretary Shalala. Her commitments to reducing tobacco consumption is an important element in the effort to protect the health of the world's young people. Tobacco addictions know no borders. It does not discriminate on the basis of gender or age. Tobacco now kills three million people each year world-wide. That represents 30 million preventable deaths in this decade alone. This devastating toll is projected to rise to ten million a year over the next thirty to forty years. The increasing use of tobacco in developing countries will result in enormous health, economic and environmental costs over the long term. It's in the interest of all countries to help the people and governments of those countries to counter this negative development. If we are to stop this global trend towards increased tobacco use and addiction, we must focus on the world's youth. We know that the great majority of today's smokers began to smoke in their teens and often earlier. In Canada we've managed to reduce overall tobacco use.
But our success with some groups, particularly young Canadians, has been limited and even negated by factors such as peer pressure and the alluring and intensive marketing efforts of the tobacco industry. Child and teen addiction to harmful substances, any harmful substances including tobacco, is something that we must work to prevent. The task is certainly not an easy one. We're dealing with an addictive product on which billions of dollars are spent each year to promote sales. But I must say, we've learned some valuable lessons in this country on how to reduce consumption along the way. We want to ensure that other countries are aware of them in order that they may benefit from our experience. In Canada, through the federal tobacco demand reduction strategy, and provincial tobacco control programs, we are using legislation, research and education to help young people remain or become smoke-free.
Our involvement with the tobacco issue has taught us that a tobacco control strategy must be comprehensive. It must also be collaborative. That is, it must involve different levels of government, the health and medical communities and interested individuals in the struggle against tobacco addiction. This approach provides a model for efforts at the international level. We support the development and implementation of world-wide tobacco control strategies. These include the World Health Assembly's recent resolution to investigate the feasibility of developing an international convention on tobacco control. If adopted by the UN, such a convention would help implement international and national strategies for tobacco control. It's this kind of collaboration that characterizes the relationship between Health Canada and the US Department of Health and Human Services. We're both concerned about the lethal consequences of tobacco addiction. For this reason we have been working with the Office of Smoking and Health and the Food and Drug Administration to identify areas where we can co-operate to our maximum advantage both domestically and internationally.
Colleagues, Ladies and Gentleman, Canada is often referred to as a world leader in tobacco control. And I'm proud that Health Canada stands in the forefront of our national tobacco control policy. But the question ultimately is not how many Canadians are smoking, but whether any Canadians are smoking are at all. As long as Canadians smoke, we have a health problem. This is a time to renew our commitment domestically and to take on new commitments internationally. We will continue to share our experience and our knowledge with the World Health community. After all, we are here for the health of our people. Thank you.
Minister Marleau, we applaud your leadership and health candidates, Canada's leadership. Especially for focusing your efforts on reducing youth tobacco use. Today in the USA, more than three thousand young people at this moment will light a slow burning fire in their lungs. They will take a few puffs of a cigarette. And that will lead to another and another and another. Many will become hooked. For years and years, most will be unable to break the stranglehold of nicotine. They will lose their free will, they will lose their good health, many will try to quit and fail. This tragic public health scenario is being played out not only in the USA, but around the world. As millions of young people light up for the first time or use smokeless tobacco. Today, on World No-Tobacco Day, let us be very clear about one inescapable fact.
Tobacco use is a pediatric epidemic. Data gathered in my country show that 42% of young people who smoke as few three cigarettes a day become regular smokers. And that about 90% of adult smokers begin addictive behaviour during their teenage years. The fact is, anyone who has not started smoking by age 19 is unlikely ever to become a smoker. And seven of ten young Americans who smoke say they regret having started in the first place. This is dramatic evidence that we must do everything in our power to prevent young people from taking those first few puffs. Another tragic outcome of tobacco is the tremendous economic price is imposes on all our citizens, including non-smokers. Which is why the theme of this year's No-Tobacco Day, is "Tobacco costs more than you think".
In the United States alone 50 billion dollars a year is spent on tobacco-related illnesses. While smoking kills more people each year, as Dr. Nakajima pointed out, than AIDS, car accidents, homicides, suicides and illegal drugs combined. Today I call on all my colleagues in the international community to wage an all out campaign to save our young people. We must develop bold new strategies, international strategies to protect future generations from tobacco addiction. All countries need to work in partnership across their borders as the United States and Canada are doing, as so well described by my colleague. We must reduce the many avenues of easy access to tobacco products available to teenagers. We must better enforce laws curbing the sale of tobacco products to youth. We must counteract the powerful imagery in tobacco advertising and promotion that encourages young people to begin using tobacco products. Often tobacco use is connected with the glamorous world of sports and entertainment to lure young people. We must come up with even more enticing slogans and campaigns to save our children by making tobacco use a turn-off. We must develop joint research and surveillance projects to improve our prevention efforts, to understand what works and what doesn't, and the different reasons why young people begin to use tobacco products in the first place.
We must work across borders to educate young people about the fatal danger of nicotine addiction and about all the fun and healthful things they can do with their lives instead. The healthiest investment we can make is to ensure that our young people have the information and the incentives that they need to decide not to begin smoking, not to consume smokeless tobacco and not to risk developing a lifelong addiction. Today, let us renew our commitment to our young people. The health risks of this new pediatric epidemic require urgent attention. The challenges are formidable, and the cost of failure is the future of our young people. No matter how clear and creative our ideas, we must have the social and the political will to act. If we could stop tobacco usage in just one generation, we could radically reduce the incidence of smoking related deaths and disease, and work towards the day when nicotine addiction goes the way of small pox and polio. So today, with our colleagues from the World Health Organization, let us mark World No-Tobacco Day by pledging as nations, to join forces across national, cultural, language and political borders to save our young people. Let us work together to keep their futures and their dreams from going up in smoke. Thank you.