Sustained decline in tobacco purchasing in Denmark during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background An estimated 8 million people die every year due to tobacco use. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the health consequences of smoking, which is a leading risk factor for more severe COVID-19 symptoms, hospitalization, and death. The pandemic has also led to reductions in physical activity, increases in stress and declines in mental well-being, all factors commonly associated with triggering higher tobacco use. Methods Using a longitudinal data set of purchasing behavior from 2019–2020 among a national sample of the Danish population (n = 4042), we estimate changes in tobacco use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis compares tobacco purchases prior to the pandemic to purchases during the pandemic, at the individual level. We also examine effects within subgroups based on smoking behavior in 2019 prior to the pandemic. We estimate effects for smokers and non-smokers and, within smokers, for occasional smokers and regular smokers. Results We find large, sustained decreases in tobacco purchases during COVID-19. We estimate that weekly tobacco purchase rates decline by 24% and average quantities decline by 12% during the period spanning the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 through the end of the year. The declines are driven by regular smokers with little change in behavior among nonsmokers and increases in purchases among occasional smokers. Among regular smokers, purchase rates decline by about 30%, tobacco purchases decline by about 20% and quitting rates increase by about 10 percentage points. Conclusions Our results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to sustained reductions in smoking.

Google Trends analysis of keywords related to smoking and smoking cessation during the COVID-19 pandemic in four European countries (Preprint)

“…Nevertheless, in the short term, mounting evidence underscored the deleterious impact of smoking on the disease trajectory [7][8][9]11]. Intuitively, one might hypothesize that this phenomenon prompted numerous smokers to limit their smoking habits, albeit temporarily [53]. However, diverging from this expectation, the majority of empirical studies conducted during the pandemic across diverse global regions present contradictory findings.…”

“…First, there is a plethora of studies that account for regional differences. Some also report a decline in smoking during the pandemic [23,53]. In Spain, smokers decreasing their consumption seem to outnumber users with increased consumption [60].…”