The world's tobacco users have fallen to 1.2 billion, and women hit their goal five years early

In 2000, one adult in three used tobacco. By 2024, it was one in five. The World Health Organization's latest trends report counts 1.202 billion tobacco users aged 15 and over in 2024, down from 1.379 billion in 2000 and 1.315 billion in 2010.

The share of adults using tobacco, known as prevalence, meaning the proportion of a population with a given characteristic at a given time, fell from 26.2 percent in 2010 to 19.5 percent in 2024. WHO describes the fall since 2010 as about 120 million people, a figure its report counts across 2010 to 2025, the last year being a projection.

Women moved fastest. Their prevalence fell from 11 percent in 2010 to 6.6 percent in 2024, and the number of women using tobacco fell from 277 million to 206 million. That carried them past the global goal, a 30 percent relative reduction by 2025, in 2020, five years early. A relative reduction measures a fall against its own starting level: for women, reaching 7.7 percent from 11 percent counts as 30 percent, although it is a drop of 3.3 percentage points.

The largest single shift came in South-East Asia, once the world's hotspot for tobacco use among men. There, the share of men using tobacco nearly halved, from 70.1 percent in 2000 to 37.4 percent in 2024. The region accounts for 69 million of the 120 million fewer users the report counts between 2010 and 2025, more than half of the global fall.

How we know

The estimates rest on 2,034 nationally representative surveys held in WHO's database when data collection closed on 28 February 2025. They come from reports countries submit under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the first global public health treaty, adopted in 2003 and since joined by 182 countries and the European Union, and from survey programmes such as the Global Adult Tobacco Survey and the Demographic and Health Surveys. WHO's news release says the surveys cover 97 percent of the world's population.

A current user is anyone using tobacco, smoked or smokeless, daily or occasionally, at the time of the survey. E-cigarettes are counted separately, because they contain no tobacco. To compare countries fairly, the rates are adjusted to a common age structure, so a country with an older or younger population does not look better or worse for that reason alone. Each edition recalculates the whole trend from 2000 with the newest data, which is why its figures should not be set against older editions.

Euronews, reporting the release the following day, gives the same headline figures, including the fall among women from 11 percent to 6.6 percent and the drop among men in South-East Asia from 70 percent to 37 percent.

Why it matters

Tobacco still fuels millions of preventable deaths every year, WHO says, so each fall in prevalence is measured in lives. The report finds 61 countries on track to reach the 30 percent relative reduction by 2025. A further 79 have tobacco use falling, but not fast enough to get there without speeding up.

WHO credits the progress to tobacco control by countries, and names the tools it wants used more fully: higher tobacco taxes, advertising bans, more help for people trying to quit, and full enforcement of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, including closing the loopholes that let the industry reach children.

The gains are uneven. Men make up 83 percent of users, and at the current pace they are not expected to reach the goal until 2031. Twelve countries now see tobacco use rising. Europe has the highest rate of any region, at 24.1 percent of adults, and the Western Pacific has made the slowest progress. At the same time, WHO's first global count of e-cigarette use finds more than 100 million people vaping.

The women's figures show the target can be met at a global scale. Whether the curve for men bends as quickly depends on what governments now choose to enforce.