Smoking in Croatia

For centuries, tobacco has been utilized by the human population for a variety of uses. The current most common use of tobacco is for smoking. Tobacco is related to 6 leading causes of death worldwide. Twenty-two percent of the world smokes. In regards to gender, 36% of men smoke, whereas only 8% of women engage in this activity. Smoking is typically more culture based than behavior based. Lee and Collins state in their text that “A broad decline in smoking prevalence across most high-income countries in recent decades has coincided with substantial increases among low- and middle-income countries”. Two-thirds of smokers worldwide live in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Turkey, the United States, and Russia; one-third of all the adults in Eastern Europe smoke.







Lee and Collins state that

• Smoking causes 1 out of 10 deaths (WHO, 2003)


• By 2030 low and middle income countries will account for 7 in 10 of all tobacco-related deaths


• In China alone, 1 million people are expected to lose their lives this year from smoking. and this number will move to 2 million by 2025


• In India, around 80 million males under the age of 35 will lose their life to tobacco (Thun and da Costa e Silva, 2003)
  
  Smoking is extremely common among the people of Croatia. One of three people in Croatia smoke, with 40% of that being men and 30% being women. The ages range from pre-teens to the elderly. We have noticed many youth smoking in front of adults, either at cafés or just out in the town. There seems to be no objection from the adults to these underage teens (and pre-teens) having or using cigarettes. Since there is so much smoking taking place, our concern would be of second-hand smoke. There seems to be advertisements to discourage smoking and there are large warning labels put on the cigarette boxes that translate to “smoking kills” or the health affects of smoking (one box we found translated into "smoking damages sperm"), but we have yet to see anything about second-hand smoke being dangerous.

Kiosks (sidewalk newspaper stands with basic convenience supplies) and tobacco shops are abundant in the city of Zagreb. Every outside table at cafés and restaurants provide ash trays. The cities we have visited have all been very clean with no litter, except for that of cigarette butts.
Croatia has recently made legislative changes to ban indoor smoking. This is a positive change to benefit the health of Croatians, but the café culture in Croatia seems to promote social smoking.

The café street culture is very unique to Croatia. Every restaurant or bar has chairs and tables on the outside sidewalk (or in the middle of streets) with large umbrellas to provide really nice lounge areas. At any time of the day, there are many people seated in these areas. This is where the smoking takes place. It is hard to find a seat not near a smoker. Even though the smoking is outside, there is still a heavy exposure to the smoke since the area is very congested. Even gelato shops or coffee shops have sitting areas with high-top tables and chairs. Many of the smaller business establishments have a couple of standing areas on the sidewalks and it is almost impossible to not have to walk through a cloud of smoke.

We have also observed parents who are at an outdoor café smoking around their infant or toddler children. There seems to be no concern that second-hand smoke is dangerous.

Ben noted earlier that the air quality of Croatia is significantly different than that of the United States because of the use of “smart cars” and electric trams, but the smoke that fills the air makes it hard to breathe, just as vehicle pollutants would. - Rachel