Almost half of Thai adult males consume tobacco products with the majority smoking manufactured and hand-rolled cigarettes.

Of the 14.3 million Thai adults, or more than a quarter of the total adult population, who use tobacco, about two million chew tobacco or inhale snuff. The figures were released by the Global Adults Tobacco Survey (GATS) and raised serious concerns about the lack of effort to stamp out the habit, anti-smoking activists said. The number of tobacco users in Thailand as reported by the GATS is higher than the National Statistic Office's survey in 2001 which showed that Thailand had 10 million to 12 million smokers. Thailand is the first of 14 countries reporting the result of a study undertaken among 20,566 respondents between December 2008 and January 2009. The survey was supported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
With about two million people consuming non-smoking tobaccos, anti-smoking activists and health authorities demanded stricter measures to bring this habit under control.
"Some people use chewing tobacco and smokeless substances because they think they're less dangerous than normal cigarettes. But the fact is it's not," said Prakit Vathesatogkit, chairman of the GATS coordinating committee. Dr Prakit said he was concerned the number of smokers using hand-rolled cigarettes would increase without strict measures.
Loose tobacco is cheap and easy to access. A small pack costs just three to five baht. Therefore the tax duty on loose tobacco should be sharply increased, he said. Deputy Public Health Minister Manit Nopamornbodee agreed, saying he would talk with the finance minister in a bid to raise the tax on other tobacco products similar to cigarettes. "The current tax collection for cigarettes is 85 per cent, while for tobacco leaf it is 1 per cent, making it very cheap and easy to access, particularly among grass-roots people," Lakkhana Termsirikulchai, director of the Tobacco Control Research and Knowledge Management Centre, said. (sra)