Georgian Smokers

The FINANCIAL — Most everyone in Georgia understands that not smoking is important to living a healthy life, a full 93% agreed with the sentiment. 

As is common everywhere, though, there are still a sizeable number of active smokers: 23% of Georgians admitted to smoking at least one cigarette a day. This number is not much higher or lower in other countries in the region, but there are some differences worth discussing.  Georgians smokers have more cigarettes per day than most others, and Georgians who quit do so later in their lives. 

Georgian Opinion Research Business International recently conducted a survey for the European Commission (DG Research – FP7) to understand the health attitudes and habits of people in transitional countries.  Included in the study were 8 countries in the caucuses, eastern central Asia, and eastern Europe.  The data reveal that the active smoking rate does not vary greatly between countries; the lowest smoking rate is Moldova (20%) and the highest is Russia (31%).

Countries noticeably vary in the number of cigarettes smoked per day and in the age that people start and stop smoking.  Georgians and other Caucasians are pack-a-day people, while most others smoke between 12 and 15 each day on average. 

As you would expect, most every smoker we interviewed began smoking between the ages of 16 and 19, regardless of country, but people in some countries smoke for longer before quitting. The countries with the youngest quitters are Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, averaging 12 years as active smokers.  Armenians and Georgians take the longest to quit, averaging 21 years.

Middle Aged Men: Classic Smokers — There are two major factors that influence the likelihood of a respondent being a smoker, regardless of country: age and gender.  In general, smoking rates peak for those in the 26-35 age range and fall in each successive age group.  Every country’s eldest citizens were the least likely to smoke, with rates of around 10%, though Armenia was an outlier with 20% their seniors smoking. 

While most people who don’t smoke cite health reasons, women in this part of the world experiencesocial pressureto abstain from smoking, whichgreatly reduces their tobacco consumption relative to men; malesare significantly more likely to be smokers.  In Georgia, men are around 9 times more likely to smoke than women, but this ratio is even more unbalanced in the rest of the Caucuses. 31:1 is the ratio in Armenia, while in Azerbaijan there were 75.8 male smokers for every 1 female. 

These two factors interact to make middle aged men the typical smoker in Georgia: around 67% of Georgian men aged 36-45 smoke. This is in stark contrast to the 1% of elderly women who do.

There are, of course, a great many factors that affect smoking rates.  These include education, public policy, cultural pressures and more.  Next week we will discuss some of these in greater depth, but for now, to sate your curiosity, I will leave you with the most preferred cigarette brands in Georgia.So what brand do these smokers prefer? 

The top 10 in Georgia: