I work and live in countries where smoking is prevalent. Last night I had diner next to a 60 year old man who, while he ate, let a concatenation of cigarettes pretty much smoke themselves on the ashtray next to him. Today, it occurred to me to check just how much smoking is going on in these parts. As I imagined, the countries in which I spend most of my time are the world’s most notorious smoking centers. Just looking at the map of smoking males aged 15 or plus, I came across the following data in a recent World Health Organisation atlas.
With 60% and above smoking in that gender age group we have: Russia, Romania, Turkey, Tunisia, Georgia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Republic of Korea, Cambodia, Yemen, Kenya…
Just for comparison I looked at my country, Spain, at 40-49% and also Finland, at 20-29% (like Canada). On the low end places like Sweden, below 20%, alongside Oman or Barbados. The low end has an interesting mixture of countries, which indicates that a number of different and possibly mutually exclusive factors contribute to low smoking indices. I leave this to another post.
More in 10 Facts about Global Burden of Disease; Tobacco Free Initiative of World Health Organisation
Image courtesy of darkroastedblend
