More Smoke, Less Smokers

     A recent study suggests around 1 billion people smoke every day. That is nearly 1/7th of the world's population.

     Smoking rates have actually decreased greatly in the last 25 years. However, due to a fast growing world population, the number of actual smokers has continued to climb. In 1990 there was roughly 5.3 billion people on the planet. When the study was concluded with the census in 2015, that number has climbed to 7.1 billion.

     The study showed that 80% of the smoking population were men. Looking at the amount of men on Earth as a whole, it has been found that 1 in 4 men are daily smokers. In comparison, the amount of daily smokers that are women make up 20% of the roughly 1 billion people. According to the study, about 1 in 20 of the world's women population are daily smokers.

     While many smaller countries have higher smoking rates, the countries that smoke the most in general are China, India, the United States, and Russia. The highest smoking rate for any country is Serbia, with about 33% of the adult population being smokers.

     The United States has done a great deal to combat smoking rates including a tobacco tax and raising the minimum age to buy tobacco in some states and select cities. The plethora of ant-tobacco advertising has also had a massive impact on our country. However, other countries do not have the same anti-tobacco workings in society quite like the United States. While our country is doing well relative to the rest of the world, if the World Health Organization wants to see deaths from smoking become lower than the cause of 11% of all deaths worldwide, other countries need to realize the danger smoking can be.

-Wainam