The newest edition of the "Tobacco Atlas" released on Monday paints a grim picture of Tobacco usage, which is likely to take lives of around six million people throughout the world by 2010.

The report also disclosed that it drain approximately $500 billion from the global economy, on a yearly basis, as the industry has shifted its focus to poor nations, which have less effective public health plans.

World Lung foundation jointly with American Cancer society (ACS) prepared the Atlas.

Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss released the third version of the "Tobacco Atlas" on the second day of the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health.

The atlas, which is a comprehensive volume of research on how the tobacco is devastating both global health and economies, said, “In 2010, tobacco will kill six million people worldwide annually, 72 percent of whom will be in the low and middle income countries.”

“Tobacco's estimated $500 billion drain on the world economy exceeds the total combined annual expenditure on health in all low and middle income countries.”

Dr. Anbumani called the report as a ‘glaring piece of information to control tobacco menace across world’.

"The rest of the world has to join the developing countries to get rid of tobacco problem," he said.

The atlas reported that the tobacco industry has made the countries having less efficient public health plans and less resources as their major areas of focus.

"Since 1960, the global tobacco production has increased 300 percent in low and middle resource countries while dropping more than 50 percent in high resource countries."

More than half a billion people are tobacco users in India and China.

The reports also said that in Bangladesh alone, if an average family purchased foodstuff with the money generally spent on tobacco, over 10 million citizens would no longer suffer from malnutrition and 350 children under 5 could be saved daily.

"In 2006, about 600 billion smuggled cigarettes made it to the market, representing an enormous missed tax opportunity for the governments," the document said.

The Atlas also indicated that production of tobacco puts back potential food production on almost four million hectares of the world's agricultural land, equal to all of the orange groves or banana plantations in the world.

"In developing countries, smokers spend great sums of money in proportion to their incomes that could otherwise be spent on food, healthcare and other necessities," the atlas says.

John R. Seffin, CEO of American Cancer Society (ACS), stated that the atlas was important to know about the nature of the majority preventable of global health pandemic.

"We can utilise the information in the atlas to develop public health strategies and reduce tobacco use. We will save million of lives," Seffin said.

Over 2,000 delegates from all over the world are attending the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health, which started in Mumbai on Sunday. It will end March 12.

It is the first time the event is being held in India.