WHO global report on trends in prevalence of tobacco use 2000–2024 and projections 2025–2030

Overview

The WHO Global Report on Trends in the Prevalence of Tobacco Use 2000–2024 and Projections 2025–2030 presents WHO estimates of tobacco use prevalence among populations aged 15 years and older from 2000 to 2024, with trends projected to 2030. The estimates are provided at global, regional, and country levels.

Progress in reducing tobacco use is a key indicator for measuring countries’ efforts to implement the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The estimates are updated every two years and reported to the UN Statistical Division as WHO’s official estimates of Sustainable Development Goals indicator 3.a.1. This indicator is also used to report progress also towards the tobacco use reduction target under the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases 2013–2020 and towards the WHO’s Fourteenth Global Programme of Work.

In addition, the report presents a global summary of use of different tobacco products and e-cigarettes by children aged 13–15 years from recent national school-based surveys.

Key findings

• The number of tobacco users has dropped from 1.38 billion in 2000 to 1.2 billion in 2024. Since 2010, the number of people using tobacco has dropped by 120 million – a 27% drop in relative terms. Yet, tobacco still hooks one in five adults worldwide, fuelling millions of preventable deaths every year.
• WHO has estimated global e-cigarette use – and the numbers are alarming: more than 100 million people worldwide are now vaping. This includes: Adults: at least 86 million users, mostly in high-income countries and Adolescents: at least 15 million children (13–15 years) already using e-cigarettes.
• In countries with data, children are on average nine times more likely than adults to vape.
• The tobacco industry is introducing an incessant chain of new products and technologies for its aim to market tobacco addiction with not just cigarettes but also e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, heated tobacco products among others, which all harm people’s health, and more worryingly the health of new generations, youth and adolescents.
• More women are quitting tobacco than men: While there has been a steady decline in tobacco use for both men and women across all age-groups during 2000–2024, women have been leading the charge to quit tobacco. They hit the global reduction target for 2025 five years early, reaching the 30% milestone back in 2020. Prevalence of tobacco use among women dropped from 11% in 2010 to just 6.6% in 2024, with the number of female tobacco users falling from 277 million in 2010 to 206 million in 2024.
• By contrast, men are not expected to reach the goal until 2031. Today, more than four out of five tobacco users worldwide are men, with just under 1 billion men still using tobacco. While prevalence among men has fallen from 41.4% in 2010 to 32.5% in 2024, the pace of change is too slow.

Regional picture

• South-East Asia: Once the world’s hotspot, prevalence among men nearly halved – from 70% in 2000 to 37% in 2024. The Region alone accounts for over half of the global decline.
• Africa: Prevalence is the lowest of all regions at 9.5% in 2024, and the Region is on track to meet the 30% target. However, because of population growth, the absolute number of tobacco users continues to rise.
• Americas: The Region has achieved a 36% relative reduction, with prevalence dropping to 14% in 2024, though some countries still lack sufficient data.
• Europe: This is now the highest-prevalence Region globally, with 24.1% of adults using tobacco in 2024, with women in Europe having the highest global prevalence at 17.4%.
• Eastern Mediterranean: Prevalence is 18%, with tobacco use continuing to rise in some countries.
• Western Pacific: With 22.9% of adults using tobacco in 2024, down from 25.8% in 2010, the progress in this Region is the slowest. While women have low prevalence at 2.5%, men have the highest prevalence of all regions at 43.3%.

Actions needed

• WHO is urging governments everywhere to step up tobacco control. This means fully implementing and enforcing the MPOWER package and the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, closing loopholes that allow the tobacco and nicotine industries to target children, and regulating new nicotine products like e-cigarettes. It also means raising tobacco taxes, banning advertising, and expanding cessation services so that millions more people can quit.