Smoking is not disappearing. More than one billion people worldwide still smoke, with four in five living in low- and middle-income countries, where the burden of smoking-related disease and death is greatest. Despite a gradual decline in smoking prevalence, population growth has kept the total number of smokers broadly unchanged: there were an estimated 1.1 billion smokers in both 2000 and 2020, and the WHO projected this figure to remain at around 1.1 billion until at least 2025.
For more information, see chapter #1 in GSTHR 2020 report.