Smoking patterns in Croatia and comparisons with European nations

In recent years, tobacco use and its control have become increasingly the focus of attention of policy-makers and researchers due to ill health effects of smoking on both smokers and non-smokers. This paper contributes to a neglected research area by focusing on tobacco use and its regulation in Croatia. In particular, this study uses recent survey information to analyze the tobacco use patterns in Croatia and influence of tobacco campaigns and to compare these patterns to other EU candidate nations and the EU as a whole. Overall the results show that in some aspects of tobacco use and regulation Croatia fares better than other European countries, while in other aspects it is somewhat lagging. For instance, on the positive side, more Croat smokers and ex-smokers were exposed to anti-smoking campaigns than smokers in other countries. However, the effectiveness of such exposure is modest in terms of the percentage of smokers who wanted to quit smoking and the relatively low share of population which claims protection from second-hand smoke. Croatia also has to further strengthen the country's compliance with international tobacco control mandates in terms of enforcement of existing tobacco consumption restrictions. Besides shedding light on the effectiveness of tobacco control policies, the findings of this study have some implications for Croatia's accession to the E.U.