Tobacco Control Country Profiles

Current, reliable information about the tobacco pandemic is available in Tobacco Control Country Profiles 2003, a report that describes the situation in 196 countries and territories around the world; 192 WHO Member States, two WHO associate Member States (Puerto Rico and Tokelau), Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of China), and the West Bank and Gaza Strip (presented together).

This country-by-country data supports the 12th World Conference on Tobacco or Health held in Helsinki, Finland, during August 2003.

The profiles give governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) an updated, standardized reference about the national and regional tobacco problem. It also identifies knowledge gaps that require further research.

"The data in this report demonstrate the immense size and scope of the tobacco pandemic," wrote John R. Seffrin, PhD, CEO of the American Cancer Society. "It should serve to mobilize the full force of the tobacco control community.”

Among the findings in this report:

• Worldwide, approximately 1.3 billion people currently smoke cigarettes or other tobacco products (approximately 1 billion men, 250 million women).
• Globally, the prevalence of tobacco use is substantially higher in men (47 percent) than in women (12 percent) but significantly increasing smoking rates among women were noted in Cambodia, Malaysia and Bangladesh.
• Female smoking prevalence is actually higher than male smoking prevalence in the Cook Islands, Nauru, Norway, Papua New Guinea, and Sweden thanks largely to aggressive tobacco industry marketing of cigarettes to women.
• In 1995, more smokers lived in low- and middle-income countries (933 million) than in high-income countries (209 million).
• About 35 percent of men in developed countries smoke, compared with almost 50 percent of men in developing nations and almost two-thirds of men in China.
• Currently, more than 600,000 annual smoking-attributable deaths occur in China alone.
• If current smoking patterns continue, deaths from smoking in Asia—home to one third of the world’s population—are expected to increase to 4.9 million per year by 2020.

The American Cancer Society, the World Health Organization, and the International Union Against Cancer jointly published the Tobacco Control Country Profiles 2003. The World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Bank Group, among many other individuals and groups, provided data and other resources in support of this project.

Tobacco Control Country Profiles 2003 will be posted on this page soon. Please check back to view PDFs for each country.

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