Statistics on Smoking and related diseases
How many smokers are there in Hong Kong?
- There was a total of 667,500 (daily and occasional) smokers in Hong Kong in 2017, or 10.8% of population aged 15 or over.
- 93% of them were daily smokers and they consumed an average of 12.4 sticks of cigarettes in a day.
- The number of male was almost sixfold of female among daily smokers.
- Men on average smoked 12.8 cigarettes a day, women smoked 10.1 cigarettes a day.
Source: Thematic Household Survey Report No. 64, Census and Statistics Department, HKSAR Government 2018 (figures from 2017)
How many people die of smoking?
- The number of smoking-related mortality in Hong Kong people at age 35 years or above was 6,826 in 2011*.
- Among them, 6,154 were directly killed by active smoking and 672 were attributed to exposure of secondhand smoke*.
- Globally, smoking is responsible for over 71% of all lung cancer deaths^.
Sources: *Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health’s news update in February 2018. ^World Health Organisation’s tobacco fact sheet in June 2016