Georgia has one of the highest smoking prevalence among the European countries. Cigarette smoking alone kills 8000 to 11 000 (22% of all death cases) people per year in the country. According to the STEPS 2010 and 2016 smoking prevalence has increasing trend - 33.7% (30.3% in 2010) of Georgian adult population are current smokers, among them about 57% (55.5% in 2010) are men and 7% (4.8% in 2010) are women. According the results of the urine cotinine test that was done for the first time under the STEPS 2016 the real prevalence of smoking in women is 12.2% while in men it shows the same result. 15.8% of adults were exposed to tobacco smoke at the workplace and 43.0% at home. Cigarette smoking is almost the exclusive form (98.6%) of smoking tobacco; mean number of manufactured cigarettes smoked per day is 21.3. Just 3 in 10 current smokers have tried to stop smoking in the last 12 months and only 40% were advised by a health care provider to stop smoking. Average monthly expenditure on manufactured cigarettes was 81 GEL (USD 35). In order to address this devastating health and economic burden of the growing tobacco epidemic amendments to the Tobacco Control laws have been adopted by the Parliament of Georgia. Despite the efforts of strives of the Georgian Government tobacco industry interference in law implementation remains a big challenge. Given this situation, some of the vitally important tobacco control policies are being prioritized: implementation of FCTC Article 5 obligations, strengthening implementation of time bound articles of the WHO FCTC, strengthening tobacco control law enforcement and strengthening of tobacco taxation. These measures will contribute to full implementation of the WHO FCTC, thus also advancing the achievement of SDG targets related to tobacco control.
Funding: WHO-Euro