The proportion of smokers in Germany has risen significantly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, reports dpa.
The smoking rate in Germany is currently over one-third (34.5 percent) among people aged 14 and older, according to the representative “German Survey on Smoking Behavior” (Debra). Before the pandemic (early 2020), it was around 27 per cent. Now, a quarter more people smoke than shortly before the pandemic.
It’s a frightening development, epidemiologist and Debra director Daniel Kotz told dpa. Kotz, who heads the addiction research focus at the Centre for Health and Society at the University Hospital in Düsseldorf, attributes the trend primarily to the relapse of ex-smokers who have started smoking again in the wake of so-called corona stress. However, he said, it can still be observed that many young people in Germany never started smoking in the first place – unlike in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.