About one Ethiopian adult in twenty used tobacco in some form in 2024: 4.6% in the Global Adult Tobacco Survey of that year. Stopping lowers the risk of cancer at any age. The help that works, and the questions to ask at a health facility, are set out below.

Key facts

Tobacco causes more than 20 different types or subtypes of cancer (opens in a new tab). WHO’s June 2026 fact sheet restates its position: there is “no safe level of exposure” to any form of it.
Two figures exist for Ethiopian adult tobacco use in 2024 and they are not the same measurement. The surveyed value comes from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2024: 4.6% of adults aged 15 and over (opens in a new tab). That is 8.8% of men and 0.5% of women (WHO Global Health Observatory, indicator TOBACCO_MPOWER_M1_PREVALENCE). WHO’s modelled estimate for the same year and age range, indicator M_Est_tob_curr, is 4.5%. The surveyed figure is the one used across these pages. The modelled one is given here so a reader who meets it elsewhere knows what it is. Neither is adopted over the other.
Among Ethiopian 13–15-year-olds surveyed in 2023, 10.3% were currently smoking, against 4.0% of adults in 2024. Boys in that age group smoked at 10.9% and girls at 8.0%, against 0.4% of adult women (WHO Global Health Observatory, indicators TOBACCO_MPOWER_M3_PREVALENCE and TOBACCO_MPOWER_M1_PREVALENCE).
Tobacco smoking accounts for 60–70% of preventable lung cancer (opens in a new tab) worldwide. In Ethiopia in 2024, lung cancer was the ninth most commonly diagnosed cancer but the sixth biggest cancer killer (opens in a new tab).
On WHO’s 2024 MPOWER scoring, Ethiopia is recorded at 5 on smoke-free places, help to quit, pack warnings, mass-media campaigns and advertising bans. It is recorded at 4 on monitoring and 3 on taxation. Tax was 45.9% of the retail price of cigarettes in 2024, against WHO’s 75% benchmark (WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2025).

Current tobacco smoking in Ethiopia by sex, adults 2024 against 13–15-year-olds 2023.

Sources

Sources: Global Adult Tobacco Survey Ethiopia 2024 and Global Youth Tobacco Survey Ethiopia 2023, via WHO Global Health Observatory, retrieved 14 August 2026. This chart plots smoking only: both-sexes values are 4.0% of adults and 10.3% of 13–15-year-olds. Ethiopia’s widely quoted 4.6% adult figure refers to ALL tobacco use, including smokeless, and is not what is shown here. The both-sexes adolescent value of 10.3% does not reconcile with the male 10.9% and female 8.0% in the same dataset, so the three should not be read as one set; the primary GYTS report is not published, so no source used here settles why. Among boys the adolescent-to-adult ratio is 1.4.

Table

Current tobacco smoking in Ethiopia by sex. Smoking only, not all tobacco use. Two different surveys, so the two rows are not a like-for-like pair.
Group	Male	Female
Adults 15+ (GATS 2024)	7.7%	0.4%
Adolescents 13–15 (GYTS 2023)	10.9%	8.0%

What tobacco does

Tobacco causes more than 20 different types or subtypes of cancer. It kills more than 7 million people a year worldwide. More than 1.6 million of those are non-smokers who breathed other people’s smoke. The underlying estimate is the Global Burden of Disease 2023 study. IHME published it in 2025, and WHO restated it on its 2026 fact sheet. Second-hand smoke is itself a cause of lung cancer and heart disease.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer records which cancers that evidence covers, site by site. Its list of classifications by cancer site (opens in a new tab) was updated on 18 May 2026. In it, tobacco smoking appears with sufficient evidence at nineteen entries. Those entries begin with mouth, throat, oesophagus, stomach, colon, rectum, liver, bile duct and pancreas. They go on to nasal cavity and sinuses, larynx, lung, cervix, ovary, kidney, renal pelvis and ureter, bladder, and two forms of myeloid leukaemia.

Breast is not on that list at that strength. IARC records tobacco smoking and breast cancer as limited evidence, in the same table. The distinction is not a technicality. Sufficient and limited are different findings. Listing breast beside the lung would tell a reader something IARC does not say. Alcohol is the exposure on these pages with sufficient evidence for breast cancer. The food and alcohol page sets that out.

There is no threshold below which tobacco becomes safe. That holds for every form of it, chewed and smokeless products included.

Stopping tobacco, and what helps

Stopping lowers the risk at any age. Ten years after a person stops smoking, their risk of lung cancer is about half that of someone who still smokes. Their risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, oesophagus, bladder, cervix and pancreas also falls. That is WHO’s summary of the evidence, in its questions and answers on the health benefits of stopping, February 2020.

Help makes a measurable difference. Counselling and medication can more than double a tobacco user’s chance of stopping successfully. That is from WHO’s tobacco fact sheet of June 2026.

WHO published its first clinical guideline on stopping tobacco (opens in a new tab) for adults in July 2024. It recommends these:

Brief advice from a health worker, as a routine part of care. It takes between 30 seconds and 3 minutes.
More intensive support for anyone who wants it. That can be one to one, in a group or by telephone.
Medicines. WHO recommends four: varenicline, nicotine replacement therapy, bupropion and cytisine.
Medicine and support together. WHO’s announcement of the guideline, 2 July 2024, states that combining the two raises the rate of stopping successfully.
Text messages, phone apps and internet programmes. These can be used with other help or on their own.

WHO asks countries to provide these treatments free or at reduced cost.

In Ethiopia, the Ministry of Health’s toll-free line, 952, includes counselling for people who want to stop. Ethiopia’s National Tobacco Control Strategic Plan for 2023 to 2030/31, published by the Ethiopian Food and Drug Authority, records that stopping tobacco was added to that line. It also records that the line’s counsellors were trained in telephone counselling for smokers. WHO’s data for 2024 also records a toll-free quit line in Ethiopia (WHO Global Health Observatory, indicator TOBACCO_MPOWER_O1_TREATMENTSUPPORT).

Two sources describe the medicines differently. WHO’s 2024 data records nicotine replacement and bupropion as legally sold in Ethiopia, from a pharmacy with a prescription, with the cost partly covered. Varenicline is recorded as not legally sold (indicator TOBACCO_MPOWER_O2_MEDICATIONAVAILABILITY). The national plan, however, names the “lack of NRT in the formal market” as a weakness. It calls the unavailability of nicotine replacement “the major challenge”. The two may be describing different things: what the law allows, and what pharmacies actually stock. Neither is adopted here. A pharmacist can say what is in stock.

Which of these is offered varies from one facility to another, and this page does not list services. These questions work at any health facility:

“Is help with stopping tobacco offered here?”
“Can I see a health worker for advice or counselling, and more than once?”
“Are any medicines for stopping available here, and what do they cost?”
“If not here, where should I go?”

Heated tobacco products are not a way to stop. WHO’s June 2026 tobacco fact sheet states that they do not help smokers to stop using tobacco.

Young people and nicotine

Nicotine is highly addictive and harmful, particularly for children, adolescents and young adults, whose brains are still developing. WHO’s June 2026 fact sheet states this. It adds that nicotine in adolescence can affect attention and learning. It also states that starting early can make long-term dependence, and later use of other nicotine and tobacco products, more likely.

This matters in Ethiopia because smoking is already present at school age. In the Global Youth Tobacco Survey of 2023, 10.3% of 13–15-year-olds were currently smoking (WHO Global Health Observatory, indicator TOBACCO_MPOWER_M3_PREVALENCE). Among the girls it was 8.0%.

WHO’s 2024 guideline is written for adults. For a young person who wants to stop, the place to start is a health worker, with the same questions as above.

Adult tobacco use by sex, and by product

Among Ethiopian adults in 2024, 8.8% of men and 0.5% of women used tobacco in some form. That is a difference of roughly eighteen times, rising to roughly thirty-six times for cigarette smoking (7.2% of men and 0.2% of women). All four figures are from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2024 (indicator TOBACCO_MPOWER_M1_PREVALENCE); the ratios are CPR – Ethiopia calculations.

The direction of travel for Ethiopian women is disputed, and both sides are on the record. WHO’s modelled, age-standardised series has female smoking prevalence drifting slightly upward, from 0.7% in 2000 to 1.0% in 2024 (WHO Global Health Observatory, indicator M_Est_smk_curr_std). An Ethiopian Public Health Institute news item reported the 2024 survey dissemination forum. It quoted the Ethiopian Food and Drug Authority’s Director General as stating that female current tobacco use fell from 2.1% in 2016 to 0.5% in 2024. The two are unlikely to be measuring the same quantity: age-standardised smoking against crude any-tobacco use. Neither is adopted here.

Smokeless tobacco was used by 1.7% of adults in 2024 — 2.6% of men and 0.8% of women. It is the one major tobacco category still legally on sale in Ethiopia. Shisha, e-cigarettes, other electronic nicotine devices, heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches are all reported by the government as banned (opens in a new tab).

What Ethiopian law covers

Proclamation 1112/2019 brought tobacco under the Food and Medicine Administration Proclamation. Under it, Ethiopia reported to WHO in 2025 that public places are 100% smoke-free. The same report records colour graphic health warnings covering more than 70% of the front and back of packs. It also records a ban on both direct and indirect advertising and sponsorship, and a minimum sale age of 21. By 2024, all eight categories of public venue that WHO tracks were completely smoke-free. Those are health facilities, schools, universities, government offices, workplaces, restaurants, bars and public transport. In 2018, five of the eight were not.

What this means in Ethiopia

The 2023 youth survey recorded current smoking at 10.3% among 13–15-year-olds, against 4.0% of adults in 2024 (indicators TOBACCO_MPOWER_M3_PREVALENCE and TOBACCO_MPOWER_M1_PREVALENCE). That is about two and a half times. Among girls the comparison is 8.0% against 0.4%. The two surveys differ in year, age range and instrument. So this is a comparison between cohorts rather than a like-for-like measurement. On that reading, the very low female tobacco use recorded among Ethiopian adults is not present in the cohort now at school.

Two of the measures WHO tracks remain unfinished. At 45.9% of retail price in 2024, tobacco tax in Ethiopia was 29 percentage points below WHO’s 75% benchmark (WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2025). WHO describes tobacco taxation as the most cost-effective way to cut tobacco use, and names young people and low-income groups specifically. Ethiopia is also neither a Party nor a signatory to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products. That protocol entered into force in 2018, and is the treaty instrument covering the supply side of the same problem.

Ethiopia ran a full national tobacco survey in 2024. It presented the results at a forum in Addis Ababa in April 2025. The WHO NCD Microdata Repository (opens in a new tab) is the global catalogue in which national survey datasets of that kind are deposited.

What you can do

If you use tobacco, stopping lowers your risk at any age. Counselling and medication can more than double the chance of stopping successfully. Ask at a health facility what help is offered there, or call the Ministry of Health’s toll-free line, 952. The questions under Stopping tobacco, and what helps, above, work anywhere. If there is none, ask where to go for it.
Make your home and your vehicle smoke-free. The law covers public places, not private ones. Second-hand smoke causes cancer in people who have never smoked.
Talk to your teenage children, daughters included. In the 2023 Global Youth Tobacco Survey, 10.3% of 13–15-year-olds were currently smoking, and 8.0% of the girls.
Do not sell or supply tobacco to anyone under 21. That is the legal minimum age in Ethiopia, and retailers are required to check.
Smokeless tobacco carries the same warning as every other form. It remains legally on sale in Ethiopia. WHO’s position is that no form of tobacco has a safe level of exposure.