The Social and Demographic Diffusion of the Tobacco Epidemic in Norway

Abstract

In Norway, tobacco-chewing, either of plug-tobacco or tobacco consumed as moist snuff, were the predominant type of tobacco consumption right up to the 1930’s. Among smokers the pipe was much more common than the cigarette, but was displaced by cigarettes after World War II and is now together with the use of chewing tobacco a curiosity on the market. What makes Norway unique in the case of tobacco consumption, is the massive use of hand-rolled cigarettes, which is almost exlusively a post war phenomenon. However, the use of manufactured cigarettes seems to have increased in relation to hand-rolled cigarettes in recent years.