Latest statistics released by the World Health Organisation reveal the prevalence of male smokers across the world, with a staggering 40 percent smoking tobacco.
Globally, about 40% of men smoke as compared with nearly 9% of women. About 200 million of the world’s one billion smokers are women. However, the epidemic of tobacco use among women is increasing in some countries.
Nationals with the highest percentage of adult male smokers include Russia with 59 percent, China with 47 percent, Jordan with 70 percent and Indonesia with a huge majority of 76 percent.
Romania is posting 36.9 percent, quite similar to Poland (32.4%), Croatia and Czechia (35%). The most chronic smokers in Europe, besides Russians, are in Greece (52%) and Serbia (43%).
According to WHO, smoking causes the death of 600,000 people worldwide on an annual basis, reported to 1 billion smokers in 2015.
Smokind trends in youth
A WHO survey of smoking trends in youths showed that in half of the 151 countries surveyed, similar numbers of girls and boys smoked. Evidence suggests that most of these girls and boys will continue to smoke into adulthood. Bans on tobacco advertising, as called for in the WHO Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control, could help to stop the increase in tobacco use among girls.
Many more girls than boys smoke in the false belief that it is a good way to control weight. Low self-esteem is associated with smoking among girls, and available evidence from some developed countries shows that girls have lower self-esteem than boys. Tobacco control strategies must recognize that boys’ and girls’ decisions to start using tobacco are influenced by different cultural, psychosocial and socioeconomic factors.
Out of the more than 5 million people who die every year from tobacco use, approximately 1.5 million are women. Most (75%) of these women live in low- and middle-income countries. Unless urgent action is taken, tobacco use could kill up to 8 million people every year by 2030, of which 2.5 million would be women.