四六级

　　Tobacco Production and Consumption

　　烟草生产和消耗

　　We meet smokers almost everywhere, in the street, in shops, at the railway station, on thecampus and in many other public areas. This explains the astonishing statistic figure of 1.1 billion smokers out of 5. 6 billion people in the world, occupying about 20% of the world'spopulation.

　　The harmful effect that smoking has upon people mainly lies in two aspects : money loss andhealth deterioration. In the figure, we can see that the annual consumption of tobaccoamounts to 200 billion dollars, which, if spent on public welfare, can benefit a great many poorpeople.

　　It is known to all that smoking does a lot of harm, not only to smokers themselves, but also topeople around who are actually unconscious victims. According to the statistics obtained, approximately 3 million people die of lung cancer and other fatal diseases every year.

　　Fortunately, nowadays more and more people have become aware of the harmful effect ofsmoking. Tobacco consumption is decreasing. Tobacco production is decreasing (has dropped to 14.2 billion pounds in 1995 as against 14.364 billion pounds in 1994). The number of smokersis decreasing. Finally, we believe in the advance of society, we believe in a new world withoutsmoking, we believe in people.