Four years after imposing one of the toughest smoking bans in the nation, Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday that he’s donating $125 million over two years to take on the tobacco industry around the globe.
The contribution by the billionaire mayor – a former smoker – is nearly three times as large as current spending on all international anti-smoking efforts, according to one expert.
“It’s mind-boggling,” declared Ross Hammond, an international consultant to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “I woke up this morning to a very nice surprise with my coffee.”
Hammond said the World Health Organization allocates about $29 million every two years to stamp out smoking, and “that’s two-thirds of all the money available.”
So Bloomberg’s nine-figure check will bring about a “complete sea change” in the worldwide tobacco war, he predicted.
While the mayor has tried to keep his previous charitable contributions secret, this one was announced in an e-mail to reporters by the Howard Rubenstein public-relations agency.
Officials said many of the details “are still being finalized.”
The mayor said he decided to go public because he’s setting up a philanthropic foundation, and “once you start doing things through a foundation, they’re not going to be anonymous anyways.”
Bloomberg, who listed $140 million in charitable deductions last year, provided no explanation for the timing of his massive gift, other than the need to stop the tobacco industry from claiming more lives, especially in developing countries.
“Roughly 5 million people are killed by tobacco in this world each year, and unless we take urgent action, a billion people will die from smoking [this century],” the mayor said.
“It is one of the world’s biggest killers. It has sadly been overlooked by the philanthropic community.”
Experts agree.
“It’s going to save millions of lives, if properly done,” Probhat Jha of the University of Toronto, a leading authority on tobacco’s health impact, said of the mayor’s initiative.
Five countries account for 56 percent of all smokers: China, India, Indonesia, Russia and Bangladesh.
Although Bloomberg has been a crusader against tobacco since taking office, he insisted he has no personal agenda beyond improving people’s health.
“You know, I smoked,” he recalled. “Haven’t had a cigarette in maybe 25 or 30 years. Maybe 30 years by now. I just look and see people dying all the time knowing we could have saved their lives.”
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Cash vs. ash
* Bloomberg to donate $125 million to anti-tobacco groups over two years.
* World Health Organization now gives $29 million every two years to stop smoking.
* State governments spent $538 million for smoking prevention last year.
* There are 5 million tobacco deaths each year.
* Experts estimate 1.3 billion smokers worldwide.