Smoking in Romania

The overall trend for prevalence of current smokers in the general population in Romania has been gently downwards since 2006. 28% of Romanians were current smokers in 2017, down from 31% in 2006. The trend was mostly downwards, with a slight upwards blip in the 2017 survey (+1%). These data come from the Eurobarometer surveys, the most recent of which was carried out in 2017. In the most recent survey a total of 27,901 respondents from different social and demographic groups were interviewed face-to-face at home, in their mother tongue, across all 28 of the EU countries. The sample for each country is representative, however the sample sizes are relatively small (e.g. most countries had just over 1000 participants, but for Italy, Malta and Lithuania the sample was around 500). Nevertheless, the Eurobarometer surveys are useful as they have estimates for smoking prevalence collected over a number of years which can show trends, as described here.