Inside Asian Gaming

March 2014 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 9 In Focus C hina is the world’s largest consumer of tobacco. The World Health Organization estimates that one of every three cigarettes smoked on the planet is smoked there. It works out to 7,000 cigarettes per smoker per year, an increase of 40%since 1980, according to a global study conducted in 2012 by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Nationwide it averages out to 2,000 cigarettes for every adult. WHO puts the smoking population at 300 million in its most recent Global Adult Tobacco Survey, which was published in 2010 and focuses on 16 low- and middle-income countries where more than half the world’s smokers live, eight of them Asian countries. It amounted to 28% of the adult population at that time and is supported by government statistics. The University of Washington’s study, a mammoth undertaking encompassing 187 countries, calculated China’s rate at 24%, or about 270 million adults, which is in line with their estimates for East and Southeast Asia and Oceania as a whole. Either way it’s frighteningly high compared with a global rate estimated at 18.7%—or, by way of comparison, 16% in North Africa and the Middle East, 16% in Australia and New Zealand, 15% in North America, 13% in South Asia. China’s is not as high proportionately as Laos’ (31%) or Indonesia’s (30%) or Myanmar’s (30%). It’s much higher than Thailand’s (19%), Malaysia’s (18%) and Singapore’s (12%). Among Chinese men it skews much higher. But this is the rule across Asia, where women generally make up less than 5% of smokers, in contrast to the West, where prevalence rates tend to run almost equal. Something like more than half of Chinese men smoke, compared with less than 3% of women, according to WHO’s 2010 estimate. The institute puts it at 45% of men and 2% of women and finds it rising dramatically above the age of 20—the average is 56% in the prime casino demographic of men ages 35-54, which comprises more than 40% of all Chinese smokers, about 113 million people. The World Health Organization puts the number of Chinese smokers at 300 million, or 28% of the adult population. A more recent University of Washington study, calculated the rate at 24%. Either way it’s frighteningly high compared with a global rate estimated at 18.7%.