The global trends in cigarette smoking have decreased over time, as evidenced by the 10 countries that smoke the least. Smoking is one of the most harmful legal things available today. While it may take some time, it will definitely ruin your life. However, once you get addicted to the stuff, it’s almost impossible to let go, even if its causing you extreme pain. I’ve seen people too sick to get out of their hospital bed and yet the only time they sat up during the day was to take a drag.
However, there is some good news in this respect. Thanks to awareness campaigns launched by governments (even though this is mostly limited to developed nations), more people are becoming aware of the damage that smoking can cause. This is why if you compare the smoking rates by country 2019 and smoking rates by country 2018, you will notice a decrease, which is a huge win. In fact, between 2000 and 2015, the number of smokers globally decreased 29 million. However, that still leaves over a billion people globally who still prefer this potentially deadly activity. Cigarette smoking is still increasing in underdeveloped countries especially in African countries. However, there are still several European countries among the 10 countries that smoke the most cigarettes in the world. In fact, Andorra smoking is quite famous as well, with adults consuming over 6,000 cigarettes annually.
Ahmad A Atwah/Shutterstock.com
Despite the aforementioned decrease, several countries are set to miss their targets on global tobacco reduction. The very few countries which seem on target to meet this quote include some European countries in addition to some other countries such as Canada, Mexico and Australia. The United Kingdom seems to have had the greatest effect on its smokers, with enforced bans on public smoking in addition to awareness campaigns having seen the percentage of smokers in the country decrease from 46% to only 16%. Even in the US, smoking trends have decreased with the percentage of people decreasing from 20.9% to 15.5% in the last decade or so.
Insider Monkey follows corporate insiders and hedge funds to identify profitable investment ideas in advance. In addition to following the biggest hedge funds for investment ideas, we also share stock pitches from conferences, investor letters and other sources like this one where the fund manager is talking about two under the radar 1000% return potential stocks: first one in internet infrastructure and the second in the heart of advertising market. You can download a free issue of our monthly newsletter here to see one of our current recommendations that’s already up 90% over the last 12 months, but still, have a ton of upside potential left. Alternatively, you can see the latest list of the 5 stocks hedge funds are buying like crazy.
We also compile lists like highest paid CEOs in the world in 2019, top 10 toughest exams in the world and the 20 best investing books of all time- Warren Buffett edition. The lists broaden our horizons and identify emerging trends in advance.
There are some other countries which have very few smokers as well. To determine our rankings of 10 countries that smoke the least, we ranked each country with help from data provided by Data Atlas according to the percentage of male smokers and female smokers, after which we calculated their average. This allowed for unbiased rankings as well, as if we’d simply selected the total number of smokers, countries with the smallest populations would always edge out. Hence, without further ado, let’s take a look at our list, starting from number 10:
10. Panama
Male smokers: 4.4%
Female smokers: 1.2%
Panama may be more popular for the Panama leaks which shook the world, but if you want to live in a country where you’d struggle to find a smoker, you should consider Panama. Because of the extensive legislation in place to ban smoking in many public avenues and warning labels required, few people have picked up on this habit.
Pixabay/Public Domain
