Another face of “Corona” .. the high rate of smoking among Germans

May 31 is World No Tobacco Day.

AFP

The proportion of smokers in Germany continues to rise, as it currently stands at 33% among people over the age of 14, according to a long-term study entitled "The German Survey of Smoking Behaviour".

Before the Corona pandemic (end of 2019 and beginning of 2020), the percentage of smokers among the population over 14 years old ranged between 26 and 27%.

By the end of 2021, their percentage had risen to 30.9%.

And German epidemiologist Professor Daniel Coates described this as a frightening development, on the occasion of the World No Tobacco Day, which took place yesterday.

Coates heads the addiction research unit at the Center for Health and Society at the University Hospital Dusseldorf.

It is likely that the high rate of smoking may be, in general, one of the repercussions of the pandemic, explaining that one of the so-called late repercussions of “Corona” is that people are increasingly turning to tobacco products.

And whether there is a connection to the crisis of Russian aggression against Ukraine with this rise, Coats said: "I don't see any connection here with the war."

On World No Tobacco Day, Coates said: "There is a lot that needs to be done by policy if Germany is to be tobacco-free by 2040."

On the occasion of World No Tobacco Day, the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden reported that about 75,500 people in Germany died in 2020 from the consequences of smoking, and the most common cause of death was largely cancer.

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