There 17 million smokers in Iran today, Gazvin Province Medical Service head Ilham Tafi was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency. He said the statistic is a tragedy.
Tafi also noted that there are 1.7 billion smokers around the world, and the international community has been fighting to cut tobacco use for over 25 years.
"Unfortunately, there is only one center dealing with the fight against cigarettes in Iran, which opened seven years ago," he said.
About 57 billion cigarettes were produced in Iran in 2009. Seven billion fell to Tehran, Urmia, Isfahan, and Rasht, he added. The rest were imported from other countries
According to Tafi, each cigarette reduces the human life by 5 seconds and one person in the world dies every 8 seconds from smoking-related diseases.