Tobacco.org

• No smoking in Chile? No way.  

When a strict anti-tobacco law came into effect three years ago, Maria Eugenia Avila scoffed. She had no intention of quitting the two packs a day she was delightfully smoking. She just stopped going to malls.

"I flee from places where I can't smoke and I cover the horrible warnings on the packs. I love smoking and I suffer with this law and all its prohibitions. But no law is going to make me quit," the 47-year-old kindergarten teacher said, while puffing away on a habit that costs her nearly $150 a month.

Three years into the tobacco-control legislation, Chileans are far from kicking the habit. Smoking among Chileans has remained fairly stable, dropping slightly from 42.6 percent in 2006, to 41.2 percent in 2008, with a perilous upward trend among women (currently 37.4 percent) and teenagers (35.4 percent, particularly females), according to the latest government survey on tobacco consumption.

This makes Chileans the heaviest smokers in the region. Another "smoker" country is Argentina, but it lags behind with smokers making up 30 percent of its population, according to the World Health Organization. Slightly more than 16 percent of Brazilians and about 19 percent of Mexicans smoke, while in the United States, 23 percent of the overall population are smokers.

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