Tobacco use is a major contributor to illness and death from non-communicable diseases (NCDs). There is no proven safe level of tobacco use or of second-hand smoke exposure. All daily and non-daily users of tobacco are at risk of a variety of poor health outcomes across the life-course, including NCDs. Reducing the prevalence of current tobacco use will make a large contribution to reducing premature mortality from NCDs. Routine and regular monitoring of this indicator enables accurate monitoring and evaluation of the impact of implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), and tobacco control policies in the countries that are not yet Parties to the WHO FCTC, over time.
Definition:
The number of people aged 15 years and over who are current users of any tobacco product (smoked and/or smokeless tobacco), the number who use any smoked tobacco product, and the number who use any type of cigarette (excluding e-cigarettes), as estimated using the method described in the Method of Estimation below. “Current” means either daily or non-daily (occasional) use at the time of the survey. Tobacco products include cigarettes, pipes, cigars, cigarillos, waterpipes (hookah, shisha), bidis, kretek, heated tobacco products, and all forms of smokeless (oral and nasal) tobacco. Tobacco products exclude products that do not contain tobacco, such as electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) of which e-cigarettes are a common type, as well as “e-cigars”, “e-hookahs”, JUUL and “e-pipes”.
Disaggregation:
Sex
Method of estimation:
A statistical model based on a Bayesian negative binomial meta-regression is used to model prevalence of current tobacco use for each country, separately for men and women. A full description of the method is available as a peer-reviewed article in The Lancet, volume 385, No. 9972, p966–976 (2015). The resulting prevalence estimates are transformed into estimates of counts of the number of users by applying the latest available UN population estimates by sex and 5-year age groups. These are then totalled to estimate the number of users aged 15 years and older.
Method of estimation of global and regional aggregates:
The total number of users per country add together to produce region and global totals. Countries where no prevalence estimate could be calculated due to insufficient data are included in regional and global averages by adopting the average sex-and-age-specific prevalences seen in the UN subregion1 in which the country is located and calculating these out into user numbers using the sex-and-age-specific UN population estimates for the country.
Preferred data sources:
Population-based surveys
National population estimates: UN Population Division’s World Population Prospects (UNPD WPP)
Unit of Measure:
Persons per 10 000 population
Expected frequency of data dissemination:
Biennial release via the WHO Global Report on Trends in Tobacco Use, the WHO Global Health Observatory and the Implementation Database of the WHO FCTC.
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