Smoking on Tour
In this context it matters only to skaters who learned to hate going to certain European countries for contests and demos over the last 8 years, but I recently saw these stats and thought they were pretty interesting. In the good ol' USA, 18.7% of people age 15 and older smoke once a day... about 1 in 5. And after going on tour throughout Europe over the last 15 years, I would've guessed that 1 of every 2 kids in the SkateHalls was coughing one up as they skated, or as we skated... and while I don't have info on more specific age groups, i.e., the kids who came to the skateparks, I was surprised to learn that in Germany, England, Spain and France the number is much lower than I'd've guessed. Here are recent figures, for people age 15 and up who smoke cigarettes at least once a day:
USA: 18.7%
Switzerland: 20.7%
Blegium: 21.6%
Italy: 22.4%
Germany: 26.7%
France: 27.1%
United Kingdom: 28.4%
Spain: 29.9%
Austria: 40.7%
Russia: 43.4%
Greece: 48.2%
So the 1 in 4 in Germany, France, and England isn't really that much more than here... now if they would just ban it in the indoor skateparks all the US Pros would have to come up with another reason to avoid going to Europe. Wusses.
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