The number of smokers has increased over the past year.
According to a survey by the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, the smoking rate in Germany has risen by more than five percentage points over the past twelve months and is currently 36.2 percent.
Meanwhile, more than half, namely 51 percent, of smokers refuse to give up the fag.
According to a survey by the consumer research institute GfK, 29 percent want to give up the vice, although mostly not immediately.
For the client of the study, the tobacco company Philip Morris, this is not all good news.
Archibald Preuschat
Editor in Business
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Because if the company had its way, smokers should give up tobacco cigarettes.
The head of Philip Morris, the Pole Jacek Olczak, spoke out in favor of banning tobacco cigarettes in Great Britain last year.
What sounds like entrepreneurial hara-kiri is, of course, systematic.
With Iqos, the Marlboro makers have developed an alternative in which tobacco is heated rather than burned.
This is said to be at least less harmful to health than smoking a tobacco cigarette, although this is controversial among scientists.
But die-hard German smokers may not like the supposedly healthier alternative.
The survey lists smokers' concerns about switching to non-combustion alternatives: For 40.6 percent, heated tobacco is not an adequate substitute for cigarettes, in particular because of the taste (28.3 percent), the high cost (25.7 percent) and the " Technology” (14.9 percent).
However, uncertainty about the potential for damage (23 percent), a lack of information (19.7 percent) and the assumption that heated tobacco is more harmful than cigarettes (11 percent) keep them from switching.
The misjudgment regarding the relative damage potential of non-combustion alternatives could be due to a lack of knowledge about the primary cause of the harmfulness of cigarettes, the tobacco company suspects.