Fewer adults around the world use tobacco

Tobacco is among the most preventable causes of early death, and for most of the last century its use kept climbing. This century the line has bent the other way in nearly every region, as blunt warning labels, advertising bans, smoke-free laws, taxes, and help to quit did their slow work.

The figures are age-standardized, so they compare the underlying habit rather than the shifting age of the population. The decline is real but unfinished: more than a billion people still use tobacco, and progress is slowest where the industry markets hardest.