When and how did America, where tobacco is grown, end up with lower rates of tobacco consumption in its population than countries that don’t grow tobacco?

by darklordoftech

For example, what was the point in history that American cigarette smoking rates fell below French cigarette smoking rates, and what event caused this?

wotan_weevil

Given international trade, there need not be much relationship between the amount of tobacco grown and the amount of tobacco consumed in countries. Tobacco consumption is strongly affected by things such as:

  • Education about harmful effects of smoking.

  • Restriction of the advertising of tobacco products.

  • Banning smoking in workplaces, restaurants, bars, shopping centres, etc.

  • Cigarette package labelling: plain "brand-free" packaging, warning labels, graphic warnings.

  • Wealth and local availability of tobacco. This is minor in urbanised wealthy countries, but can be important in rural areas in developing countries, and has contributed to increases in smoking in many countries over the last few decades.

Essentially, smoking rates and tobacco consumption in the US started to fall in the 1960s, while it only started to fall in France in the 1980s. In 2015, the French government began taking stronger action to reduce smoking rates, passing laws requiring plain "brand-free" packaging. Daily smoking rates were about 29% in 2016 (and had been about the same since 2000), and dropped to 24% in 2019. The first four points above are powerful tools for governments to influence smoking rates.

One word of caution when comparing smoking statistics internationally: definitions can vary by country. For example, a "smoker" might be defined as somebody who smokes daily, or somebody who smokes weekly, etc. The age cut-off can vary by country, e.g., whether one reports the percentage of over-16s who smoke, or the percentage of over 15s who smoke. Other statistics can be useful, such as per capita cigarette consumption. In 2015, US and French smoking rates were 17% and 28%, while annual cigarette consumptions per capita were 1017 and 1090. While a larger fraction of the French population were smokers, French smokers smoked fewer cigarettes than US smokers.

Finally, while tobacco is originally American, tobacco growing is widespread. Today, when tobacco can be readily imported, there is less incentive to grow tobacco locally, and tobacco growing is more localised. However, tobacco is grown in many countries - for example, France is a tobacco-growing country. While the US is known as a major tobacco producer, 5 European countries have higher per-capita tobacco production (Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Serbia). Total European tobacco production is about the same as the total US tobacco production (total European consumption is about double US consumption).

The world's biggest producer is China, producing more tobacco than the next 12 largest producers combined. The majority of Chinese tobacco is consumed locally, but Chinese tobacco exports exceed the total production of any other single tobacco producer. However, while China is a giant tobacco producer, the population is also very high, and tobacco production per capita is a little over double that of the US. Cigarette consumption per capita is about double that of the US (and France), while the smoking rate is about 25% (similar to France). However, North Korean tobacco production per capita is about 60% higher than that of China, while tobacco consumption per capita is a little below half that of China (and a little below that of the US and France). These example show the lack of reliable correlation between tobacco production per capita and tobacco consumption per capita, by country.

References and sources of data:

FAO data on tobacco consumption and production, with convenient totals for Europe:

Production data, including per capita production:

Smoking rates and consumption per country:

By state data for government action to reduce smoking: