Although smokers as a percentage of the global population dropped by one quarter since 1980, a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) estimates their absolute numbers rose by 250 million.

“Since 1980, large reductions in the estimated prevalence of daily smoking were observed at the global level for both men and women, but because of population growth, the number of smokers increased significantly”, states an abstract of the study published in the 8 Jan issue of JAMA. “As tobacco remains a threat to the health of the world’s population, intensified efforts to control its use are needed”, it concludes.
Using data from 187 countries from 1980 to 2012, the study estimates smokers older than 15 represented 31.1 per cent of the population in 2012 compared with 41.2 per cent in 1980. In absolute numbers, there were 967 million smokers in those countries in 2012 compared with 721 million in 1980. The study was prepared by Marie Ng, an assistant professor for global health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, and co-authors.