Document Type
Article
Rights
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence
Disciplines
1.6 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Abstract
Background: Population data on tobacco use and its determinants require continuous monitoring and careful inter-country comparison. We aimed to provide the most up-to-date estimates on tobacco smoking from a large cross-sectional survey, conducted in selected European countries.
Methods: Within the TackSHS Project, a face-to-face survey on smoking was conducted in 2017–2018 in 12 countries: Bulgaria, England, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Spain, representing around 80% of the 432 million European Union (EU) adult population. In each country, a representative sample of around 1,000 subjects aged 15 years and older was interviewed, for a total of 11,902 participants.
Results: Overall, 25.9% of participants were current smokers (31.0% of men and 21.2% of women, P < 0.001), while 16.5% were former smokers. Smoking prevalence ranged from 18.9% in Italy to 37.0% in Bulgaria. It decreased with increasing age (compared to
Conclusions: These smoking prevalence estimates represent the most up-to-date evidence in Europe. From them, it can be derived that there are more than 112 million current smokers in the EU-28. Lower socio-economic status is a major determinant of smoking habit in both sexes.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.2188/JE20190344
Recommended Citation
Gallus, S. et al (2021). Who smokes in Europe?: data From 12 European countries in the TackSHS Survey (2017–2018).Journal of Epidemiology, 2021. doi:10.2188/JE20190344. online ahead of print.
Publication Details
Journal of Epidemiology