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Women start smoking just as early as men do
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Scientists from the University of Buffalo (USA) make a disappointing forecast: if effective measures are not taken, in the next hundred years addiction to tobacco will prematurely send about a billion people to the next world - mainly from poor countries.
For comparison: in the 20th century, 100 million people on earth died prematurely from tobacco.
The researchers analyzed data on 3 billion middle- and low-income people from Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and compared it with information on people in the United States and the United Kingdom.
As it turned out, 49% of men and 11% of women in the countries participating in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) consume tobacco in one form or another. And although there are still far fewer women than men among tobacco lovers, the weaker sex begins to smoke as early as the stronger sex, that is, at about 17 years of age. 64% of tobacco addicts consume industrially produced cigarettes.
The largest number of tobacco lovers is in China - 301 million (52.9% of men), followed by India with 274 million (47.9% of men). The largest percentage of those who overcame tobacco addiction is registered in the USA, Great Britain, Brazil and Uruguay, and the smallest number of such people are in China, India, Russia and Egypt.