Despite anti-smoking campaigns and smoking ban in many places, researchers have observed more people smoke worldwide today than in 1980, said the findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association, according to medindia.net.
The study, led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, measured data from 187 countries.
It found that the global smoking rate among men was 41 percent in 1980, but has since declined to an average of 31 percent.
Among women, the estimated prevalence of daily tobacco smoking was 10.6 percent in 1980, and by 2012 that had fallen to 6.2 percent.
The highest smoking rates among men in 2012 were in Timor-Leste (61 percent) and Indonesia (57 percent), followed by Armenia (51.5 percent), Russia (51 percent) and Cyprus (48 percent).
Top countries for women smokers were Greece (34.7 percent) and Bulgaria (31.5 percent).
