Classifying European cigarette consumption trajectories from 1970 to 2015.

The open-access data produced by this study can be used to conduct comparative international evaluations of tobacco control policies by separating impacts likely attributable to gradual long-term trends from those more likely attributable to acute short-term events. The complex, regionally clustered historical trajectories of cigarette consumption in Europe suggest that the enduring normative frame of a gently sloping downward curve in cigarette consumption can offer a false sense of security among policymakers and can distract from plausible causal mechanisms among researchers. These multilevel and multisectoral causal mechanisms point to the need for a greater understanding of the political economy of regional and global determinants of cigarette consumption.