Number of smokers grows globally

The global prevalence of smoking fell from 29.4 percent to 15.3 percent between 1990 and 2015, but, because of population growth, the number of smokers increased from 870.4 million to 933.1 million during the same period, according to a EurekAlert! story relayed by the TMA and citing the latest estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study published in The Lancet.

The study, which was said to have taken in the smoking habits of people in 195 countries and territories, was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

It reported that 25.0 percent of men and 5.4 percent of women said they smoked daily.

And in another finding it reported that smoking-related mortality rates had risen by 4.7 percent globally during the past decade.

According to the report, the 10 countries with the largest number of smokers in 2015 were China, India, Indonesia, the US, Russia, Bangladesh, Japan, Brazil, Germany and the Philippines, which together account for 63.6 percent of the world’s smokers.

Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines saw no significant reductions in smoking prevalence among men between 1990 and 2015, when their smoking rates were said to be 46.7 percent, 38.0 percent and 34.5 percent respectively.

In Russia, where comprehensive tobacco control policies were implemented only in 2014, the smoking prevalence among women increased from 7.9 percent in 1990 to 12.3 percent in 2015.

The senior author of the study, Dr. Emmanuela Gakidou of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, called for the intensification of tobacco control to reduce further the smoking prevalence and its health burden.