Friday, November 06, 2009

Binge smokers

So I was chatting with Greg. He mentioned how many people in Europe smoke, I asked if when they smoked, if they smoked as many as Americans... or if he thought there was more moderation to their habit. He did not know. Nor did I. But thanks to the the interwebs (1,2,) and me putting a little time on Excel, now we do*.

I guess the answer to our question is: It depends on the European country.

* ...or at least we have a decent idea. The numbers used were cigarettes smoked per capita and what percentage of the population smoked. I just divided the per capita number by the percent of daily smokers. The error is only by smokers who smoke less than daily, and I think it's a safe bet that they are a small % of the population, and an even smaller percent of the cigarettes being smoked. This also assumes the distributions of per capita cigs by smokers have similar shapes in all countries.
** also, I'm not sure if South Korea is right I may have mixed the S. Korea% with the N Korea per capita number. In other words, this is not a peer reviewed study ha ha