Study: Greeks are heavy smokers

1,200 households from all over Greece took part in a June 2022 survey conducted by the sociological company Marc on behalf of Papastratos on cigarettes, an “obsolete habit” as 7 out of 10 Greeks say.

Many may share this opinion, but 28.5% continue to smoke (2,250,000 people) – a stable figure compared to last year. The paradox is that 84% of smokers fear that smoking has serious consequences for their health. Harm to health is the dominant motivation to quit smoking in all categories of the population (57%), while financial costs (14%) are the second strongest motivation to quit smoking, especially among young people.

Nevertheless, they manage to get rid of a bad habit with great difficulty (and even then, not for everyone).

According to the data, it appears that more and more smokers (regular smokers) are turning to alternative products. In Greece today, 640,000 people (8%) over the age of 21 already use them, which is 2.5% more than last year. The survey also shows that 58% of non-smokers prefer a smoker next to them to use alternative ways of smoking instead of cigarettes, the smell of which is a reason for conflicts with loved ones for most non-smokers.

Taxation based on the harmfulness of tobacco products

As the number of consumers of alternative products such as e-cigarettes and tobacco products increases, so too does public opinion about how these products should be taxed. Of particular interest is the answer to the question of the correlation between taxation and the harmfulness of a product. 63% of all survey respondents and almost 80% of alternative consumers believe that tobacco products should be taxed based on their degree of harm. That is, most participants in the study believe that the difference in taxes should reflect the difference in their harmful components.

This approach, in fact, is already being applied in various industries such as the automotive industry. Electric or hybrid vehicles, for example, are taxed significantly lower than internal combustion engine vehicles. Similarly, in the energy sector, the European Commission believes in efficiency and pollution based taxation, as it has proposed higher taxes on more polluting energy sources and lower taxes on cleaner sources.

This differentiation in tax rates can also be a reason to encourage society to switch to a product that has a reduced negative impact on health and the environment.

Lack of information on alternative products

There is a lack of information about alternative smoking products. Only 1 in 10 (11%) Greeks say they are reasonably informed, however this percentage is up 2.4% compared to the corresponding survey in 2021, and 3 in 10 smokers (36%) say they have little or nothing do not know about alternatives to smoking.

Only 33% of respondents know the main differences between conventional cigarettes and alternative tobacco products.

What stands out in the survey results is the fact that the majority of the population seems to recognize the harmful effects of cigarettes and believe in an ever-increasing percentage (56% this year compared to 48% in 2021) that alternative products for smoking are the best alternative to regular cigarettes.

The study, in fact, showed that almost all society (87%) agrees that smokers should have adequate information and access to information about alternatives to smoking. More than 6 out of 10 respondents (63%) say they would be easier to recommend to smokers if they were more clearly informed about the science behind them.

However, the source of information about alternative smoking products is problematic. According to the study, the main source of information is friends/acquaintances (32%), social networks (13%), and not official bodies, as one might expect.

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