Trends over the past 30 years

  • As in the adult population, smoking increased substantially among young people during the 1990s. It has since declined — particularly among 11 to 15-year-olds — to its current level.

Although they use somewhat different methodologies, the Swiss Health Survey (conducted since 1992), the annual surveys carried out between 2001 and 2016 as part of Tobacco Monitoring Switzerland (TMS[1]) and Swiss Addiction Monitoring (SAM[2]), and the HBSC study (repeated every four years since 1994) provide a relatively clear picture of smoking trends among young people in Switzerland.

The trends reported by these different surveys are consistent. Overall, they show a sharp initial rise in smoking prevalence among young people up to the end of the 1990s, followed by successive periods of slight decline or stagnation.

Trends among school pupils aged 11-15

The HBSC study has tracked tobacco use among school pupils aged 11-15 since 1986 (Delgrande et al., 2023[3]). However, the smoking-behaviour data from the latest survey (2022) are no longer directly comparable with those from the earliest survey waves because the questions changed substantially. For comparison with 2022, trend analyses are therefore available from 1998 for lifetime prevalence of 'conventional' cigarette use and from 2006 for 30-day prevalence (Delgrande et al., 2023, Figure 4.1, page 38[3]). These analyses suggest that lifetime and 30-day cigarette-use figures changed very little across the three most recent measurement points – 2014, 2018 and 2022. By contrast, both prevalence measures declined markedly between 2010 and 2014. This followed an increase in 30-day use between 2006 and 2010 and a slight but steady decline in lifetime conventional cigarette use between 1998 and 2010.

Over the longer term, considering data collected since the study began in 1986 (although these cannot be compared directly with the 2022 results described above), the 2018 HBSC report (Delgrande et al., 2019[4]) showed clear and relatively consistent declines in weekly cigarette use (Delgrande et al., 2019, Figure 3.10, page 76[4]) and daily cigarette use (Delgrande et al., 2019, Annex 3.17, page 164[4]) between 1998 and 2018. Before that, consistent upward trends were observed between 1986 and 1998. For example, prevalence peaked among 15-year-old boys in 1998, when nearly one quarter smoked at least weekly (24.2%) and nearly one sixth smoked daily (16.4%).

Trends among adolescents and young adults

The Swiss Health Survey has documented tobacco-use trends among 15 to 24-year-olds since 1992 (FSO, 2026[5]). Smoking prevalence among 15 to 24-year-olds in this survey also rose sharply between 1992 and 1997, after which a downward trend began to emerge. It fell from 43.6% in 1997 (46.6% among young men and 40.5% among young women) to 25.8% in 2022 (25.4% among men and 26.2% among women), although there was a temporary increase between 2007 (33.6%) and 2012 (36.1%). To reiterate, in 2022 the prevalence for the age group as a whole was 25.8%: 25.4% among men and 26.2% among women aged 15-24.

[1] Keller, Roger; Radtke, Theda; Krebs, Hans; Hornung, Rainer (2011): Der Tabakkonsum der Schweizer Wohnbevölkerung in den Jahren 2001 bis 2010. Tabakmonitoring - Schweizerische Umfrage zum Tabakkonsum. Download.

[2]https://www.suchtmonitoring.ch/fr/page/8.html; accessed on 06.02.2026.

[3] Delgrande Jordan, Marina ; Balsiger, Nora; Schmidhauser, Valentine. (2023). Consommation de substances psychoactives chez les 11 à 15 ans en Suisse - Situation en 2022 et évolution dans le temps - Résultats de l'étude Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) (Rapport de recherche No 149). Lausanne: Addiction Suisse. Download.

[4] Delgrande Jordan, Marina ; Schneider, Eva ; Eichenberger, Yvonne ; Kretschmann, Andrea. (2019a). La consommation de substances psychoactives des 11 à 15 ans en Suisse - Situation en 2018 et évolutions depuis 1986 - Résultats de l'étude Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) (Rapport de recherche No 100). Lausanne: Addiction Suisse. Download.

[5] https://dam-api.bfs.admin.ch/hub/api/dam/assets/28725086/master; accessed on 30.04.2026.

AT Switzerland, April 2026

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