Around 5.4 million people die each year worldwide because of smoking and tobacco related disease, according to the World Health Organization – including over 438,000 Americans, 650,000 Europeans and 1.2 million people in China.

Tobacco use will kill 1 billion people worldwide in the 21st century if current smoking trends continue.

6.6 billion people are on this planet and 1.3 billion are smokers, the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) and the World Lung Foundation (WLF) told the 38th Union World Conference on Lung Health.

66 percent of all smokers live in just 15 countries, according to The Union and the WLF.

1.8 billion young people aged of 10 to 24 smoke cigarettes, according to the World Health Organization.
* More than 85 percent of these young smokers live in developing countries (WHO).

Learn more about how many people smoking kills worldwide.

45+ million Americans smoked in 2006. That's 20.8 percent of Americans, according to estimates from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

American men smoked at a rate of nearly 24 percent of the population, while 18 percent of women smoked.

Read on for more international smoking facts.

• Tobacco is a "major health problem" in Southeast Asia. "Approximately 50 percent of males smoke and youths, especially girls, continue to take up smoking," experts from eight of the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members said. ASEAN consists of Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

• The global anti-smoking pact was operational beginning February 27, 2005 for countries that have actually ratified it. It was the first international treaty against smoking, including an advertising ban, and was signed by more than 190 countries on May 21, 2003.

• In China, there are about 350 million smokers (about 25 percent of the population). It's also one-third of the world's smokers, according to World Health Organization statistics.
      * 100 million smokers in China are under the age of 18, according to the Chinese health ministry.
      * Did you you that just 10 percent of Chinese Americans smoke in the US as opposed to the 36 percent smoking rate in China itself?
      * About 40 million of China's 130 million children aged 13 to 18 had tried smoking, according to a Health Ministry report.

• Spain deals low price tobacco brands a blow. 9 months after passing tough new legislation limiting lighting up in public places, which set off a bitter price war by tobacco manufacturers, Spain hiked cigarette tobacco taxes to 70 euros (90 dollars) per 1,000 cigarettes.

• "20 million cigarettes are smoked every day in Egypt (that's billions of cigarettes each year). . . There are no accurate figures for shisha (hookahs) but it is becoming a modern trend," Egyptian Health Minister Hatem al-Gabal said.
      * "An average of 2.5 percent of household income is spent on tobacco in Egypt, which is more than on health and leisure," Dr Fatima el-Awa, from the World Health Organization's (WHO) regional office said.

• Did you know that the regular tobacco waterpipe (hookah) smoker is exposed to larger amounts of nicotine, carbon monoxide and certain other toxins than the typical cigarette smoker? (WHO).

• In India, 40 percent of all health problems were due to tobacco, according to Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss.
      * Nearly 17 percent of students in India, aged 15 and under, use some form of tobacco, mainly cigarettes, according to a survey conducted by the World Health Organization.
      * Can you believe some 37 percent of kids below the age of 10 tried smoking cigarettes? This, however, is down from 49 percent of Indian children who tried their first cigarette (from WHO study above).
      * Teaching tobacco use? More than a third of school personnel, including teaching staff, are tobacco users (from WHO study above).

  
  

  Numbers Don't Lie: Percentage of International Smokers

  
  

• Mexico has 13 million smokers within its population of 105 million.
  * Around half the adult population are smokers or ex-smokers, according to the National Statistics Institute.

• In Russia, 60 percent of men smoke and 30 percent of women as well.
      * In 1992, 7 percent of Russian women smoked vs almost 15 percent by 2003, according to a journal Tobacco Control report (see below).
      * The number of Russian men who smoke rose from 57 percent to 63 percent.

• In India, an estimated 120 million people smoke. But unlike Western countries, smoking is on the rise in India.
  * Cigarettes compromise just 19 percent of tobacco consumption. Bidis account for 53 percent, according to the Bidi Smoking and Public Health report by the Union Ministry of Health and Family.
      * Did you know that 800 million bidis are sold in India each year (see above)
      * Bidis contain more tar, nicotine and other toxic substances but less tobacco than traditional cigarettes.

• In Egypt, nearly 60 percent of the men use tobacco in some form in a country of 79 million people. Nearly half the men smoke.

• In South Korea, about 50 percent of men smoked, until 2006, when for the first time, the number of male smokers fell below 50 percent.

• In Vietnam, not long ago more than 70 percent of men and nearly 5 percent of women regularly light up. Now just 56% of men and 1.8% of women smoker.
  * Young smokers make 31% of the total.

• In Turkey, nearly 66 percent of men, 20 percent of women and 11.7 percent of school children smoke. That's 25 million smokers in a country of 75 million smoking 115 billion cigarettes a year. Wow!

• Around half of Venezuela's 26 million people smoke.

• In Greece, 45 percent of people smoke.
  * Around one in three 12-18 year olds tried smoking.
  * One in ten Greek 12-18 year olds is addicted to smoking, according to a 2007 survey.

• In Italy, between 14 and 16 million people smoke out of a total population of 58 million. In 2004, more than 26 percent of Italians smoked. That dropped to 24.3 percent in 2006 following the country's ban on January 10, 2005.

• Over a third of Indonesia's 230 million people smoke vs. just over 25 percent about a decade ago. This reverses smoking trends worlwide.
      * Indonesia is the world's 5th largest cigarette market.
      * A traditional clove cigarette, called "kretek", first introduced in the late 19th century to ward off illnesses, is still the cigarette of choice in Indonesia for about 90 percent of smokers.
      * "Kreteks" have about twice the nicotine and tar levels of ordinary cigarettes.
      * Some Indonesians smokers begin as early as 5 years old, government figures show.

• In Japan, 26 percent of adults smoke, a record low. The number of Japanese smokers has continued to fall since 1996. Young 20-something smokers clocked in at 14.3 percent, while 32.7 percent of those age 60 and up smoked, according to the annual survey by Japan Tobacco Inc, Japan's largest tobacco maker.
      * Japanese men's smoking rate was 60 percent in 1990 and currently 40 percent.
      * Japanese women's smoking rate was 12 percent to 15 percent.

• In the Philippines, up to 35 percent of the country's 89 million people use tobacco.
      * 4 million Filipino young people between 11 and 19 years old smoke. About 23 percent of all young Filipino smokers vs about 18 percent in 2005. And that number may continue to grow, in spite of new restrictions on tobacco ads, according to a 2007 survey commissioned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Philippines health department.
      * 1.8 million of these young smokers were girls.

• About 25 percent of British adults smoke. That's 10 million people.

• South African smoking has declined 40%: They smoked around 2 billion packs of cigarettes in 1990 vs 1.3 billion packs in 2005, according to a WHO report.
  * In the the 1990s, tobacco tax rates skyrocketed 250 percent (see above).

• About 33 percent of adults smoke in Argentina. The country is also one of the world's top 10 tobacco suppliers.

• About 33 percent of Uruguay's 3.4 million people smoke, anti-smoking groups estimate.

• The Czech Republic smoking rate is 26.6 percent. Unfortunately it was 26.2 percent 10 years ago.
  * In 2006, 8.4 percent of Czech 15 year olds smoked, up from 5.8 percent in 1994.

• In Iceland, about 24 percent of Icelanders smoke, 2005 was the most recent year statistics were avaiable.

• 22 percent of Finns smokes, Finalnd.

• In Sweden, 18 percent of the population smokes.

• In Hong Kong, around 14 percent, or 800,000 of the city's 7 million people have the smoking habit. A low number compared to most countries.

• In Malaysia 21.5 percent of the adult population smoked in 2006, down from 25 percent in 1996, according to the Third National Health and Morbidity Survey.
      * The percentage of Malaysian women smokers has doubled to 480,000 in recent years, according to Health Ministry parliamentary secretary Lee Kah Choon.
      * There were more than 2 million smokers overall.
      * Malaysian smoking is increasing despite increasing prices and stepping up campaigns on smoking's health risks.
      * 467,000 smokers were between 13 and 17 years old with almost 10 percent being girls.

• In Thailand, the number of smokers fell to 9.4 million (17 percent) out of a population of 65 million.
      *Thai smokers puff through 110 million cigarettes daily.

• In Australia, 140,000 children are weekly smokers.

• New Zealand's smoking rate is 19.9 percent for people age 15 and older, the lowest level in more than 30 years. There are 150,000 fewer smokers in New Zealand now.

• In lreland, smoking has increased since the 2004 smoking ban. 33% of the population smoked in 1998 that decreased to 27% by 2002 but rose to 29% in 2007, according to the Irish Government-commissioned National Health and Lifestyle Survey (SLÁN 2007).

• In Canada, 5 million people smoke, according to the Ministry of Health.
      * Canada's target for smokers in the country by 2011, 12 percent of the population. That's down from the current down from 19 percent of Canadians that smoke, according to Health Minister Tony Clement.
      * Canada estimates $16 billion dollars is paid by its government each year because of smoking and tobacco, including $4.4 billion in direct health care costs.

• UK: In 2008, 4,068 expected to quit on the Island out of 190,000 people estimated to attempt quitting in the South East, according to Smoking Toolkit study by Professor Robert West, a leading tobacco control expert.
      * More than 164,000 people have stopped smoking since the England and Wales smoking bans started.
      * Dundee, Scotland will give smokers from poor parts of the city $25 a week to buy fresh food. They must take weekly tests to prove they did not start back smoking again.

• Governments lost more than $40 billion in taxes because about 600 billion cigarettes were smuggled in 2006 or 11 percent of the world's consumption, according to the Framework Convention Alliance (FAC), an umbrella group of hundreds of anti-tobacco organizations, estimates.

Yes, smoking kills. Smoking is an international problem. Smoking around the world clearly will not end overnight. Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?

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