LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The study examined representative samples to estimate tobacco use among three billion people. Lead researcher Gary Giovino says the study "demonstrates an urgent need for policy change in low- and middle-income countries."

While many people in industrialized nations, in particular the United States, is taking steps to quit or never start using tobacco, the study proves that the opposite trend is under way in parts of the developing world.

The WHO warns that "if current trends continue, it will cause up to one billion deaths in the 21st century."

Called the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), focused on countries in which smoking is known to be a growing problem. "The burden of tobacco use is moving," Giovino says who formerly oversaw the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The tobacco epidemic takes different forms in different countries," he said in an interview. "But manufactured cigarettes are dominating."

Conducted between 2008 and 2010, the study found that across 14 developing nations, 49 percent of men and 11 percent of women used tobacco. Most of them smoked, 41 percent of men and 5 percent of women.

Numbers were highest in Russia, where 60 percent of men and 22 percent of women used tobacco; China, where 53 percent of men and 2 percent of women were tobacco users; Ukraine, where 50 percent of men and 11 percent of women used tobacco and Turkey, where 48 percent of men and 15 percent of women used tobacco.

Smoking rates may now be even higher than they were in 2010, WHO officials say.

"One place where we know it's gone up, unfortunately, is Egypt -- as a result of the revolution," Edouard Tursan D'Espaignet of WHO's tobacco control program says.

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