Is Smoking on the Decline?

Worldwide cigarette consumption is an excellent example of how statistics can be manipulated and people's perceptions affected by the nuances of published data. It struck me recently that the accepted decline in smoking due to public awareness, advertising bans, increased taxation etc. did not agree with the number of my co-workers who smoked. Agreed that my talking to 50 people is neither statistically significant or particularly representative, maybe I'm surrounded by the last few smokers in America, but it did seem to warrant further research.

This is where the problems start. The most prevalent data on the internet is taken from nationmaster.com which in turn cites a WHO study as it's source. This study lists countries by cigarette consumption per capita per annum; that is how many cigarettes the average person smokes each year. Greece is number 1 with 4,313 cigarettes smoked each year, an amazing number considering that is almost 12 a day if everybody smoked. Next come Hungary, Kuwait, Japan and Spain; no real surprises unless you think how dangerous it is to smoke in Kuwait considering it's virtually one big petroleum reserve. At the bottom of the list, there are 106 countries, are Afghanistan, Liberia, Ethiopia, Burundi and Sudan, all with less than 100 a year. We may think that maybe the smoking trend hasn't taken hold in Africa, maybe there is a correlation with poverty, or maybe they are just more health-conscious in those countries. None of the above, the reason is that only manufactured cigarettes, the Marlboros and Newports of the world, were counted. Sudanese smoke just as much anybody else but make the cigarettes themselves. In some instances this was taken into account, after a fashion; in India 7 local cigarettes, called bidis, were taken to constitute 1 'regular' cigarette. How they arrived at this conclusion is not explained while the extent this skews the data is patently obvious.

So, what about America you ask, must be kinda low considering all the good publicity we have been hearing. Well, I suppose it is kind of low in that the United States declined to participate in a WHO study and thus there is no data. This leaves us with the impression that America did not make the list of the top 100 countries, not so as we shall see. Much has been made of the massive increase in smoking in China, although they are number 33 on the list with 1,791 cigarettes a year, just over 40% of Greece. The U.S. Department of Agriculture issues a Tobacco Outlook Report from its Economic Research Division, the latest data shows the average American smoked 1,691 cigarettes a year, just below the Chinese. A closer look at the data from that report shows some other anomalies. The study shows consumption since 1900, apparently it peaked in 1965 when the average was 4,259 per year but what is really interesting is that going back to 1900 the number gets lower and lower, at the beginning of the 20^th century Americans averaged 54 cigarettes a year! Once again we stumble over the fact that this is dealing with the number of cigarettes sold, not tobacco consumed. In 1900 chewing tobacco, smoking a pipe or hand-rolling cigarettes were far more prevalent than manufactured cigarettes. The WHO study points out that cigarettes constitute 96% of the total value of tobacco sales. Exactly. I rolled my own cigarettes for many years, paying the equivalent of 20% of a manufactured cigarette (less if I bought the tobacco in bulk). All that is really happening is that rising wealth in the developing world means more people are purchasing manufactured cigarettes whereas a portion of the decline in American consumption can be explained by a switch to cheaper or less monitored products.

Sources : nationmaster
WHO/WPRO-Smoking Statistics
Tobacco Outlook Report, Economic Research Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture