Pi-Consulting

How would we explain to a man from Mars that, daily and in significant numbers, humans put rolled-up tubes of paper filled with shredded vegetation in their mouths and solemnly set fire to them?

Some people believe that the smoking habit should be inexorably disappearing. Addicts huddle miserably in the rain-swept doorways of smoke-free buildings, and suffer pariah treatment from their non-smoking workmates when they slink back to their desks. (One street-doorway smoker in New York City recently got yelled at from an open window two stories up, we heard). Airlines and dating agencies bar smokers from using their services (though one enterprising entrepreneur has floated the idea of a smokers-only airline in retaliation). Bans on tobacco advertising and sponsorship proliferate. World Health Organization figures brand tobacco a bigger hazard to human health than malaria and tuberculosis combined. It can’t be long now, you’d think, before the demon weed disappears altogether.

You’d be wrong. Cigarettes aren’t going away. Around twenty percent of adult Americans still smoke. That’s about 48 million people. The Marlboro brand from Philip Morris account for 40% of all US consumption, contributing handsomely to the $4.6 billion profit turned in last year by the brand’s makers. The company’s main manufacturing plant, 1.6 million square feet in size, produces 310 million Marlboros a day, and gives no signs of stopping anytime soon.

Looking beyond America, there are large parts of our planet where cigarettes continue to advance as a ubiquitous part of daily life. As prohibitionists, drug tsars and cigarette taxers usually find to their dismay, bad habits don’t disappear, they just migrate.

Coherent patterns emerge in worldwide smoking. The further east (if you’re a man) and south you are, the higher the likelihood of your being a smoker. Worldwide, Spanish-speakers elect to smoke in bigger numbers than those who speak English, French, German or Portuguese. (This is especially true in countries where the original Iberian genes remain largely unmixed with other ethnic groups, such as Spain and Chile). Catholic countries have more smokers than Protestant ones, (implying a touching faith that Rome will forgive your lungs as well as your sins).

Size of country is an ambivalent indicator, but small countries often seem to have more smokers than big ones. Greece has long had Europe’s highest cigarette consumption, The Economist magazine revealed, at eight cigs per adult per day. Iceland and Switzerland were the runners-up, at six a day. Biases by sex can vary widely. In China, Russia and Mexico, male smokers outnumber females by enormous margins, implying that lighting up there still carries a connotation of machismo, or its oriental equivalent. In Britain, however, there are already more female smokers than males. This reflects a decline in smoking overall, coupled with a sharply increased uptake by young women.

Market research data can often reveal the endearing illogicality of the human condition. Simmons data in America recently suggested that more smokers than non-smokers would “pay anything where their health is concerned”. Over half of Latin-American smokers “agree that smoking should be more restricted”. Neither opinion seems to stop them smoking.

Logic says tobacco’s days are numbered. Anti-smoking measures are trying to get more people to give up the habit. California, for instance spends about $100 million annually on anti-smoking efforts.

But this, dear visitor from Mars, is Planet Earth. Smoking, a thing of the past? Don’t hold your breath.