The tobacco epidemic has four distinctive tobacco consumption patterns in the population:
- Stage one: steep rise of smoking prevalence among male population
- Stage two: increase of female smokers, 50 % or more increase of male smokers
- Stage three: a plateau and a slow decrease in smoking among males, plateau in female smokers
- Stage four: a plateau and decrease of prevalence among females, further decrease among males.
These trends are followed by similar patterns in smoking attributable mortality two to three decades later
Four Stages of the The tobacco epidemic (reproduced by permission of BMJ Publishing Group)  Source: Lopez et al., 1994 | 
Literature and data sources
;){kind=link}