Increased Tobacco Consumption in 2020 — Worrying trends for Germany
Earlier during the COVID-19 crisis, experts predicted that lockdowns and ensuing financial stress would reduce access to tobacco products. Moreover, considering the known harmful effects of tobacco consumption on respiratory health, it was assumed that people will reduce — if not completely refrain from — tobacco consumption. But, at the same point, it was also realistically expected that emotional and mental distress caused by the pandemic would cause increase in smoking and could even trigger relapsed smoking.
With benefit of actual data available, it now makes sense to revisit and observe if and how tobacco consumption changed in 2020. So, as it stands, Germany — among many other countries — witnessed significant increase in tobacco consumption (as measured in taxed quantity) in 2020.
As evident in the graph above, tobacco consumption — across all tobacco products — increased in 2020 compared to recent annual trends. While this year-on-year change in 2020 does not appear to be significant for Cigarettes, the change seems pretty steep for other products.
To better understand the change in consumption trend in 2020, I built an analytical model to adjust the relative year-on-year change vis-a-vis recent historical trends and any potential seasonality in consumer demand.
Using the model, I found that even for Cigars, the quantity consumed in 2020 is not a significant outlier. The actual volume of Cigars consumed in 2020 is well within the forecasted range — as predicted by the model.
However, for the other remaining products, the consumption is unfortunately well beyond the range of expected values — as predicted through our analytical models using recent historical trends.
For Fine-cut Tobacco, the consumption in 2020 not only bucked recent trends of declining sales but also exceeded the annual sales ever reported in last 7 years. Basis historical trends, the analytical model predicted the annual consumption in Germany for 2020 to be in range between 23,612 and 24,268 tonnes. However, the actual consumption of 26,328 tonnes far exceeded this range. So, the actual consumption of fine-cut tobacco in 2020 is ~2,383 tonnes more than the reasonably expected volume — about 30 grams excess fine-cut tobacco per capita was consumed.
Similarly, for Pipe Tobacco, consumers used about 1,410 tonnes more than the average volume predicted by the analytical model — 5,989 tonnes actually consumed in 2020 vs. 4,578 tonnes as expected to be consumed in 2020 considering recent trends. Moreover, even when compared to the volume observed in 2019, Germans consumed an additional 1,839 tonnes of pipe tobacco in 2020. So, on an average, about 17–22 grams more pipe tobacco per capita was consumed in 2020.
Bottom Line
So, even as the government and medical agencies stress on the need to vaccinate and employ necessary precautions to bring COVID-19 pandemic to end, it is imperative that appropriate steps are taken to curb this increasing trend in tobacco consumption rather quickly.
While a perverse silver lining is that increase in tobacco consumption has added an estimated additional € 234 Millon to the state exchequers in 2020, this worrying trend will have long-term impact on the health system — which could have a more significant and adverse effect on the country’s resources in coming years.
