IS THE WORLD FINALLY ENDING THE CIGARETTE HABIT?

We know today that smoking tobacco leads to serious health effects.

• It is the the greatest cause of preventable death globally, and killed at least a hundred million deaths in the 20th century.

• 
  Current smokers are estimated to die an average of 10 years earlier than non-smokers.
• Tobacco contains 70 known carcinogens, plus nicotine, which is a highly addictive psychoactive drug.
• As early as the 1700, it was generally known that tobacco caused cancer.
• But tobacco companies succeeded in selling their product to the public.

I heard that China still smokes a lot, so I asked Google AI:

Despite a slight decline in the percentage of individual smokers, overall cigarette consumption in China has surged by 39% over the past two decades. The country now accounts for nearly half of the world's total cigarette consumption, selling approximately 2.4 trillion cigarettes annually. [1, 2]

The rising trend in cigarette sales and consumption is driven by a combination of institutional, economic, and social factors: [1, 2, 3]

• State Monopoly Conflict of Interest: The Chinese government operates a massive state-owned tobacco monopoly (China Tobacco), which supplies nearly all of the country's tobacco products and accounts for roughly 7% to 8% of the central government's total budget. Because of this, the state relies heavily on the industry's profits. [1, 2, 3]
• Low Cigarette Prices: Despite global declines in smoking, cigarettes in China remain incredibly affordable. A pack averages about $3 USD (roughly one-third of the price in the United States). [1, 2]
• Economic Stress and Culture: Smoking is deeply ingrained in Chinese social and business culture. Furthermore, economic stagnation has led many citizens to use nicotine as an affordable "mood modulator" to cope with stress, while smoking restrictions are only weakly enforced. [1, 2]

However, China only ranks #39 in the world in cigarette consumption/capita.

• #1      North Macedonia  39.5%
• #11    France  30.1%
• #31    Spain 25.4%
• #35    Russia  24.2%
• #39    China    22.6%
• #42    Italy  21.8%
• #71    Japan  16.4%
• #93    Singapore  12.1%
• #106  USA  9.6%
• #123  Australia  7.8%
• #140  Norway  6.2%
• #160  India  3.8%

• 
  You ask, where is North Macedonia?  
• Not near China, but in southeastern Europe.
• You would think that their life expectancy should be low.  Well, they rank a not bad 67th out of 197 countries.

• 
  Is a parliamentary democracy.
• President from 2024 has been Gordana-Siljanovska-Davkova with 65% of the vote.

• 
  Population of 1.8 million, and most live in their capital and only large city of Skopje with 543,000 people.
• This region developed the Cyrillic Alphabet in the 9th century.

• 
  Visitors go to Lake Ohrid, said to be an incredible site of ancient living fossils.  Houses over 200 endemic plants and animals that exist nowhere else on Earth.
• It gained peaceful independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.
• Accepted into the United Nations in 1993.
• Joined NATO in 2022 as the 30th member.

Other notes about tobacco.

• Men smoke more than women, for in Indonesia, the male smoking rate is 74.5%, with females at 3%.  Yet in Nauru, the rate is 47.8% for men and 45.6% for women.

• 
  Tobacco kills more than 7 million per year and another 1.6 million from second hand smoke.  But 65 million died from COVID.
• Wealthier countries tend to smoke more.
• Those with Christianity or Judaism tend to be anti-tobacco.
• Ghana has the lowest rate, 1.9%, and Nigeria is next with 2.4%.
• The UK in 2000 had a smoking rate of 38%.  Anti-tobacco campaigns reduced this to 12.5%.
• 
  The USA?
• Peaked at 42.4% in 1965, and has dropped to 9% today.
• That high rate would today rank #1 in the world.
• In 1965, the leading smokers were in the Netherlands and Japan, at 60%.
• In 1965, Canada's rate was 49.5%, and is down to 11% today.

• 
  As of 2022, there were around 300 million Chinese smokers.  The U.S. population is 343 million.

There was a time when smoking companies lied, and maybe they still do.

• In 1957, U.S. Surgeon General Leroy Burney declared that there is a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer.
• In 1962, the UK indicted cigarette smoking to lung cancer and heart disease.

• 
  Then came a 1964 report by the U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health.
• Analyzed more than 7000 articles/papers, and linked smoking to chronic bronchitis, emphysema, heart disease and lung cancer.

• 
  That led to laws.
• U.S. Surgeon General in 1988 called cigarette smoking an addiction rather than a habit.
• Tobacco politics raged from the 1950s to the 1990s and to today.
• Lobbying helped, and both Congress and the courts favored the tobacco industry in the early years.  In 1990, tobacco lobbies gave $70 million  to politicians.  That dropped to $21.8 million in 2017.
• It was not until the 1990s that public opinion in the U.S. overcame the companies.  So they went international.

• 
  State governments began taxing tobacco products, and in 2010, the cumulative tax exceeded $32 billion, representing a major revenue stream.  This tax peaked that year at $17.2 billion, and has decreased every year since then to $11.6 billion in 2023.  But that is because this money-making scheme led to shrinking usage.
• Also, tobacco advertising and sponsorship of sporting  events were banned.
• Fighting back, the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, or Philip Morris International, spends $80 million/year to endorse new tobacco industry products.  They don't give up.

The largest tobacco companies.

• #1  China National Tobacco Corporation, selling 2.3 trillion cigarettes annually
• #2  Philip Morris International, largest publicly traded tobacco company in the world, with a market value exceeding $269 billion and over $38 billion in annual net sales.
• #3  British American Tobacco with $33 billion annual net sales.
• #4  Altria Group, a U.S. operation valued at $114 billion and owns Phillip Morris.
• #5  Japan Tobacco Inc., with a market value of $68 billion.  Sells Winston, Camel (outside the U.S.) and Mevius.

Cost of a pack of 20 Malboro today.

• #1      Australia  $35.90
• #2      New Zealandd  $24.89
• #3      UK  $23.90
• #9      Canada  $14.45
• #10    Singapore  $13.87
• #11    Hong Kong (part of China)  $13.40
• #16    USA  $10.40
• #25    Saudi Arabia  $7.45
• #52    Mexico  $4.74
• #64    Japan  $3.88
• #66    China  $3.70
• #72    Russia  $3.41
• #80    South Korea  $2.97
• #98    Vietnam  $1.36

As you would expect, cigarette smuggling is a massive global issue.  Here is video from Australia.

So is the world smoking more or less today?

• Less, because the world smoking rate was 22.7% in 2007, and is now down to 17%.
• But actually more, for the population of the globe has increased, from 3.3 billion in 1965 and 6.6 billion in 2007, to 8 billion today, and the number of smokers has actually increased to 1.3 billion.
• But less because the 5 to 6 trillion cigarettes annually seems to be slightly declining.  Global sales decreased by 12%.
• So guess the answer to the top question is no to ending, but yes to slightly declining.

To close, some history.

• First used by the native people of the Americas as far back as 12,300 years ago
• European explorers came, and Christopher Columbus was the first to bring this product back home.
• Swiss doctor Conrad Gexner in 1563 reported that chewing or smoking a tobacco leaf has a wonder ul power of producing a kind of peaceful drunkenness.  Spanish doctor in 1571 Nicolas Monardes claimed that tobacco could cure 36 health problems.

• 
  Sir Walter Raleigh, English explorer is largely credited  in the late 1580s with popularizing the smoking habit in England.
• Tobacco growing in the U.S. was one of the primary reasons for slavery.
• The Japanese were introduced to tobacco by Portuguese sailors in 1542, and in the 20th century led the world in smoking.  They were notorious on commercial flights.  Today, #71.
• 
  Nazi Germany saw the first modern anti-smoking campaign.
• I can go on, but I'll stop here.

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