Tobacco Use: A Review of Global Trends, Interventions, and a Proposed Cessation Strategy for Urban Nigeria

Tobacco use remains a major global public health concern, contributing significantly to chronic diseases such as lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cardiovascular disease. This paper reviews the historical development of tobacco use, its global and regional prevalence trends, and the range of interventions that have been implemented to reduce it, including psychosocial counselling, educational and community mobilization strategies, mass media campaigns, and pharmacological treatments. Behaviour change frameworks, including the Transtheoretical Model and the Health Belief Model, are examined as underpinning approaches to smoking cessation. Building on this review, the paper proposes a tobacco cessation strategy targeted at youth and adults in urban Nigeria, outlining the intervention's rationale, implementation approach, mechanism of action, ethical considerations, and potential barriers to success, including political, socio-economic and financial constraints. The paper concludes that a collaborative, multi-pronged approach combining counselling, mass media engagement and new technology is needed to reduce the burden of tobacco-related disease, with particular attention to educating young people who remain most vulnerable to uptake through peer influence. Keywords: Tobacco use; Smoking cessation; Health promotion; Nicotine dependence; Mass media campaigns; Transtheoretical Model; Health Belief Model; Nigeria; Public health intervention