In 2020, more than 3 out of 10 adults (31.8%) said they smoked “from time to time” and a quarter (25.5%) said they smoked daily: here is the conclusion of the latest Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin published by Public Health France this Wednesday, May 26, 2021.
The results of this vast survey (carried out among 14,873 French people, throughout 2020) tell us that after having fallen dramatically in recent years, smoking is stabilizing in France: 29% of men and 22% of women smoke every day (13 cigarettes on average), about 4% of seniors aged 76 to 85 smoke daily, and about 32% of French people are “ex-smokers”.
The Covid-19 epidemic does not seem to have increased smoking in France
More interesting perhaps: the proportion of smokers among the most precarious French people rose from 29% (in 2019) to 33% (in 2020). This significant increase is, according to Public Health France, “in a context of social crisis in France (…) with the “yellow vests movement” marked in particular by a challenge to socio-economic inequalities“; “among the least privileged populations, cigarettes could be used to manage stress or to overcome daily difficulties, despite the increasingly high cost of this product“.
On the other hand, contrary to what one might think,the start of the Covid-19 epidemic and the restrictive measures put in place (…) do not appear to have had an adverse impact on smoking prevalence“.
Cigarette: what if it was the right time to quit? According to the Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin of Public Health France, around 30% of daily smokers wishing to say “goodbye” to cigarettes managed to quit smoking for (at least) a week in 2020. According to an OpinionWay survey for the French Federation Associations and Friends of the Sick, Respiratory Insufficient or Handicapped (FFAAIR) carried out in 2016, it takes (at least) 3 attempts to achieve a long-term stop smoking… We hang on!
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