31 May Today is World No Tobacco Day!

Today is World No Tobacco Day!
There are still too many people who actively and passively smoke: In Germany alone, around 120,000 people die every year as a result of tobacco consumption. Worldwide the figure is around 8 million. It is estimated that this costs our healthcare system in Germany alone almost 100 billion euros per year!
That is an enormous amount and completely avoidable, because not using tobacco is the simplest and most effective solution for preventing many cancers, heart attacks and respiratory diseases. This is also proven by the figures for heart attacks, which have fallen sharply since the referendum "Yes to real non-smoker protection", which was initiated by the ÖDP in 2010 and introduced a consistent smoking ban in restaurants, pubs and festival tents! That is real health protection!
Teenagers and young adults are particularly at risk from smoking. E-cigarettes and vapes are considered particularly interesting because of the different flavors. But beware: there is a risk of addiction with products containing nicotine. Nicotine-free products also encourage a behavior that sees smoking as harmless.
In addition, vapes, i.e. disposable e-cigarettes, produce masses of waste. It is estimated that five million disposable e-cigarettes are sold in Germany every month! That's an enormous amount of plastic waste, much of which ends up in our environment.
Conventional cigarettes are also pure poison for our environment: a single cigarette takes 15 years to decompose and contaminates between 40 and 60 liters of groundwater. And that's not all: more than 7000 chemicals are released into the environment through cigarette butts.
That is why we in the ÖDP - The Nature Conservation Party have declared war on smoking!