Countries with the Highest Smoking Rates

About This Dataset

The countries with the highest prevalence of tobacco use among adults aged 15 and over, according to WHO age-standardised estimates for 2020. The figures cover all tobacco products, not just cigarettes.

✨ AI Insight

Small Pacific island nations and Southeast Asia dominate the top of the smoking rankings. Nauru has the world's highest adult tobacco-use rate at 48.5%, followed by Myanmar (44.1%) and Kiribati (40.6%) - in each of these, roughly two in five adults use tobacco. Southeast Asian countries feature heavily, with Papua New Guinea (39.3%), Timor-Leste (39.2%) and Indonesia (37.6%) all near 40%. The other cluster is the Balkans and Baltic region of Europe: Serbia (39.8%), Bulgaria (39.0%), Latvia (37.0%) and Croatia (36.9%) all rank among the world's heaviest-smoking populations, reflecting weaker tobacco-control policies than in Western Europe. Lebanon (38.2%) is the only Middle Eastern entry. The list highlights how tobacco use has shifted toward lower- and middle-income countries even as it falls across the wealthy West.

Source: World Health Organization (WHO)

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

🏆

Nauru leads with 49 in All Time.

📊

Average value in All Time: 40 · median: 39.

↔️

Gap in All Time: Nauru is 1.3× larger than Solomon Islands.