Prevalence of Tobacco Use Among Youth in Germany, 2011

"Current data on tobacco consumption amongst adolescents and young adults is also available from the DAS (BZgA 2012a). In 2011, 70.8% of 12-17 year old adolescents in Germany have never smoked, 11.7% smoke. 4.8% smoke on a daily basis, 2.0% smoke 10 cigarettes or more per day and 0.3% smoke more than 20 cigarettes per day. 17.5% have tried smoking at least once but are currently non-smokers. In the case of young adults between the ages of 18-25, 27.6% have never smoked; the smoker quota is 36.8%. 23.1% smoke every day, 16.5% consume at least 10 cigarettes per day and 4.8% smoke at least 20 cigarettes per day. Amongst adolescents and young adults, no differences in smoking behaviour between the sexes can be seen. Smoking is declining amongst males and females between the ages of 12 and 17 as well as between 18 and 25. Amongst adolescents, the rate has more than halved over the last decade from 27.5% (2001) to 11.7% (2011). Trend analysis of the existing HBSC studies on tobacco consumption is also available. This shows that regular smoking in the period 2002 to 2010 decreased significantly overall, whereby the stronger reduction was in the period 2002 to 2006. The rate of smoking amongst 13 year olds fell from 14.1% in 2002 to 3.0% in 2010; amongst 15 year-olds from 33% to 14.9%. This decline was observed for girls as well as boys to the same extent (Richter et al. 2012)."