SMOKING, you may have heard, is unhealthy. On May 31st its adversaries celebrate World No Tobacco Day, an annual event that since 1987 has spread the word. Lawmakers have listened, wrapping tobacco firms with regulations. They have piled on taxes and boxed in marketing teams. Australia requires plain packaging for its cigarettes and on May 28th Ireland’s health minister said he was planning a similar ban. This is having an effect. ERC, a research firm, says consumption per person was 999 cigarettes a year in 1990 and only 882 in 2012. Yet the appetite for cigarettes continues to rise. Smokers lit up 5.9 trillion times last year compared with 5.1 trillion in 1990. Population growth accounts for much of the increase. But the numbers would be higher still if they included black-market ciggies.

Temperance in some countries is matched with growing addiction elsewhere. In western Europe consumption per person fell by 42%—from 1,744 smokes in 1990 to 1,003 last year. Anti-smoking laws in Panama helped consumption per person plunge by 70%. It boasts one of the world’s lowest rates.

But people in other places puff away merrily. Together, China’s 1.3 billion citizens plough through more packets than anywhere else. The average Chinese person smoked 30% more in 2012 than in 1990, ranking the country 11th by consumption per head. Lebanon and Myanmar saw even more dramatic growth (though a shift from illicit to official sales somewhat distorts those trends).

ERC tracks 123 countries, home to about 99% of smokers. It finds the worst addicts in central and eastern Europe. Serbians each smoke a lung-blackening 3,323 cigarettes per year, more than any other nationality. Eight of the top ten countries, ranked by consumption per person, are in the former Eastern block. The World Health Organisation thinks tobacco accounts for nearly 10% of adult deaths. A high cost for a small pleasure.