Strong anti-tobacco measures are growing, but reach only a minority worldwide

Smokers are about 21 times more likely to die from lung cancer than people who never smoked, and they face increased risks from over a dozen other diseases. I know people who died from smoking: you probably do too.

In 2008, the World Health Organization created a set of tobacco control policies with different tiers, the highest of which are considered “best practices” — they are listed on the chart.

The chart also shows the share of the global population living in countries that had enacted these policies as of 2007 and 2024.

What surprised me is how recent most of these policies still are. In 2007, only a tiny share of the global population benefited from these policies. Since then, coverage has increased across all these measures, but most of them still reach less than half of the world's population.

What is the share of taxes on the retail price of a pack of cigarettes? See the data for each country →

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Strong anti-tobacco measures are growing, but reach only a minority worldwide” by Simon van Teutem, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

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