Tobacco and Public Health - TCSC Indonesia

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TOBACCO SMOKING IN CENTRAL EUROPEAN COUNTRIES: POLAND
cigarettes for free, army service was a good school in smoking. For this reason, smoking
rates among young (20–29 years old) men were 70–80% (depending on the level of
education) in the early 1980s. Smoking was also quite widespread among young
women, of whom nearly a half were smokers (Fig. 13.2).
The transformation of the late 1980s/early 1990s brought about changes in norms and
behaviour. Access of children to cigarettes increased (Westernization?!). International
studies of 13–15-year-old children carried out in the 1990s showed the rates of smokers
(at least 1 cigarette a week) in boys at an unchanged level of 30% and a rapid rise in
girls—from 16% (in 1990) to 28% in 1999 (Mazur et al. 2000). Still, these rates, especially
among girls, are again lower than in western European countries (Mazur et al.
2000).
At the same time, the steep rise in smoking rates in early adulthood has been
stopped, at least in Poland (1999 data for 20–29-year-old men and women: 49% and
22% respectively) (Fig. 13.2).
Smoking among women
Historically, smoking was rare among women in eastern Europe. Women from rural
areas did not smoke at all before World War II. The smoking habit was spreading
among better educated women living in towns and cities. This is confirmed by
epidemiological data on lung cancer (Zatoński et al. 1996). After World War II, the
popularity of smoking among women rose rapidly, with 18% of adult women smoking
in 1974, and 30% in 1982. The 1974 survey revealed considerable differences in successive
birth cohorts (Fig. 13.2).
The smoking habit begins to increase more rapidly among less well-educated
women, but is still grossly limited to the urban female population. There are still much
fewer smokers among women from rural areas, also at the end of the twentieth century
(not only in Poland but in most EE countries). These observations are confirmed by
data on the distribution of lung cancer, which is invariably rare among women from
rural areas (Zatoński et al. 1996).
Data from the 1980s and 1990s reveal a picture of a rapid diversification of smoking
rates among Polish women by level of education. For example, in the early 1990s about
40% of pregnant women with elementary education and about 10% of those with university
education smoked cigarettes (Szamotulska et al. 2000). A change in attitude
towards smoking led to a rapid decline in smoking rates among the youngest women,
especially those better educated (Fig. 13.2). Between 1980s and 1999, the rate of
women smokers in the 20–29 age group fell nearly by half (from 36% to 22%). There is
still a large population of never-smoking adult Polish women (66% in 1999) (Zatoński
2002b).
Now, at the turn of the century, smoking is much more popular among less welleducated
women, unlike the pattern that was prevalent as late as the mid-1970s. This is
again well illustrated by epidemiological data on the incidence of lung cancer.