Around 1 in 7 people in Japan say they regularly smoke, marking a drop to a level last seen in 2022, a health ministry survey has found.

According to the national health and nutrition survey released Tuesday, only 14.8% of respondents said they smoked on a regular basis. This tied with numbers from 2022, which were a record low. The percentage has decreased consistently since 2012, which was the last time it exceeded 20%.

The highest rate of smokers were reported among men in their 40s and 50s, with over 30% saying they smoked regularly. Overall, smoking was more common among men, with 24.5% saying they smoke while the percentage was only 6.5% among women.

Among smokers, around 60% said they smoked paper cigarettes while 40% said they used heated tobacco products ¡ª such as Iqos or Ploom ¡ª with the use of the latter being slightly higher among female smokers.

Nearly 1 in 5 of those who said they smoke also said they wanted to quit.

The survey was conducted between October and November last year and received responses from around 10,400 randomly selected households across the country. The ministry gathers the data annually, but 2020 and 2021 were an exception due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other notable survey findings include the increase in the number of people who are thought to have diabetes.

Around 11 million people over the age of 20 were deemed highly likely to have diabetes, which is just short of double the 6.9 million people recorded in 1997, when the data was first available. The number has consistently risen over the past two decades.

Respondents who answered they have either been diagnosed with diabetes in past health checkups, have received treatment for it, or recorded high hemoglobin A1c numbers were considered ¡°highly likely to have diabetes¡± in the survey.

They made up around 12.9% of the overall respondents, with the likelihood of having diabetes higher among men at 17.7%, compared to 9.3% among women.

Looking at the nutrition value and diets of Japanese people, the average amount of sodium consumed per day was 9.6 grams. This was the lowest it has been in the past 12 years, though it is above the 7 gram limit recommended by the government.

Similarly, the average amount of vegetables eaten per day was 258.7 grams, which is well under the 350-gram goal set by the government.