Exceptionally low smoking rates among a university community in Estonia—a country with highly sustained national rates

To test the assumption that smoking rates among Estonia’s academic community are lower than presupposed by high education levels alone and to review their changes during the country’s transition.

The staff of the University of Tartu (UT), Estonia, was surveyed for smoking habits in 1992, soon after the disruption of communism (1,441 respondents), and in 2003, after the first transitional decade (2,117 respondents).

Among UT men, 21% smoked daily in 1992, but only 13% in 2003, whereas little change was seen in the general male population of Estonia (corresponding figures 51% and 48%). Among UT women, 11% and 7%, respectively, smoked daily, and among the general female population, 22% and 21%. UT members with an academic education showed much lower smoking rates than academic Estonians in the general population (men only 1/3, women 1/2), and even UT members in the lowest educational class had smoking rates as low as academic Estonians in the entire country. A study of age patterns suggested that taking up smoking among UT men decreased among generations born in 1938–1947 and later, whereas among all Estonian men, it only decreased among those born in the 1970s and later.

Smoking among the UT staff is rarer than presupposed by high education levels. Presumably, a thin segment of educated people who during the Soviet era had communication channels with the West adopted non-smoking relatively early. University communities in transitional societies are in key position to speed up the diffusion of non-smoking in the population.