Prevalence of smoking habits among the Iraqi population in 2021

Introduction Cigarette smoking is globally regarded as a serious health risk. Although measures have been taken across the world to mitigate the consequences of the tobacco epidemic, the lack of data on smoking in the Iraqi population is a serious obstacle to the action necessary to reduce tobacco consumption. The current study's goal is to determine the smoking rate in the Iraqi population. Methods Our cross-sectional study was performed from August to November 2021 to determine the smoking prevalence in Iraq. The questionnaire was based on a webbased system and was in the main Iraqi languages, Arabic and Kurdish (Kurdish-Sorani and Kurdish-Kirmanji). The link to the questionnaire was distributed via social media, a convenience sample of 13142 participants of different race, age and gender participated in the study Results We found that the overall smoking rate in Iraq within our sample was 22.44%. The smoking by males (31.7%) was significantly higher than that of females (3.6%). The average daily cigarette consumption of males was 21 cigarettes, 6 more than the consumption of females. The mean age of female smokers (40.3 ± 19.3 years) was higher than that of male smokers (34.0 ±12.5 years). The Wasit province had the highest smoking rate (47.1%) while Mesan province had the lowest smoking rate (8.3%). Conclusions Our study revealed significant gender and regional disparities in smoking rates and behaviors. These findings underscore the need for targeted smoking cessation programs that consider both gender and regional differences to effectively address and reduce smoking rates in Iraq.