Civil society monitoring of tobacco industry point-of-sale marketing in Colombia

In Colombia 17.3% of men and 5.6% of women are smokers. Among children, boys (11.9%) are less likely to smoke than men, but girls (7.9%) are more likely to do so than women. This tobacco use results in over 26,000 deaths per year – or 15.9% of all deaths in the country (IECS and IETS 2013). Because tobacco marketing is so clearly implicated in the onset of teen smoking, Colombia’s relatively high levels of underage smoking have focused attention on the need for its regulation.