Global: Will smoking run out of puff?

New Zealand recently announced plans to ban smoking for future generations – meaning people aged 14 or under at the time the legislation was passed will never be legally allowed to purchase cigarettes. Over in Britain, our survey from last year that found that most Britons want to ban them outright at some point.

Is smoking on the way out? A look at five key markets reveals a range of opinions. In Britain (perhaps unsurprisingly, given the proportion who said they’d prohibit smoking entirely), half say the habit is not long for this world, compared to a third who disagree (52% vs. 32%). It’s a similar situation in Hong Kong, although people are less emphatic about it: two in five (41%) say smoking will die out compared to a quarter (25%) who disagree.

In other markets, the proportion who think cigarettes will fade out of memory and the proportion who think they’re here to stay are closer: in the UAE, it’s over a third vs. three in ten respectively (35% vs. 30%), and Germans are nearly evenly split, though biased towards smoking remaining (42% vs. 45%). In America, people are least likely to think cigarettes are going to be phased out of polite society (39% vs. 45%).

Methodology

YouGov Profiles is based on continuously collected data and rolling surveys, rather than from a single limited questionnaire. Profiles data is nationally representative and weighted by age, gender, education, region, and race. Learn more about Profiles.

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