Smoking Statistics

28 May 2002

• About a third of the male adult global population smokes.
• Smoking related-diseases kill one in 10 adults globally, or cause four million deaths. By 2030, if current trends continue, smoking will kill one in six people.
• Every eight seconds, someone dies from tobacco use.
• Smoking is on the rise in the developing world but falling in developed nations. Among Americans, smoking rates shrunk by nearly half in three decades (from the mid-1960s to mid-1990s), falling to 23% of adults by 1997. In the developing world, tobacco consumption is rising by 3.4% per year.
• About 15 billion cigarettes are sold daily - or 10 million every minute.
• About 12 times more British people have died from smoking than from World War II.
• Cigarettes cause more than one in five American deaths.
• Among WHO Regions, the Western Pacific Region* - which covers East Asia and the Pacific - has the highest smoking rate, with nearly two-thirds of men smoking.
• About one in three cigarettes are consumed in the Western Pacific Region.
• The tobacco market is controlled by just a few corporations - namely American, British and Japanese multinational conglomerates.