Nicotine

Five in six current users chose a smoking option#

WHI 2026 asked one question about nicotine and offered seven answers, one to be picked: the description that fits best. 7,223 of the 9,097 responses picked one.

Current nicotine use is the five product categories together: 1,239 answers, or 17.2%. It includes the 26 on patches, gums or lozenges — products people take in order to stop — and the 33 vape selections. This is a nicotine-use measure, not a tobacco-smoking rate. It leaves out the 230 who said they had quit within the last year, because the question asks what you do now.

Inside that 17.2%, smoking cigarettes or bidis dominates. Daily and occasional smoking are 14.6 of the 17.2 points, five in six current users. Smokeless tobacco, vaping and replacement products together come to 2.6 points, and vaping on its own to 0.5% — whatever the discreet-product market is doing elsewhere, it is barely visible in these answers.

Because each response carries one label, the table shows what people would call themselves rather than everything they use. Someone who smokes daily and also chews gutka appears once, in whichever box they picked.

For scale, the Global Adult Tobacco Survey put tobacco use at 21.2% of urban Indian adults in 2016–17 and 28.6% of all Indian adults — tobacco only, everyone aged 15 and over, and a household survey rather than a workplace one. A neighbouring measure, not the same one.

Figures count submitted responses, including repeats, rather than unique people. Each result uses complete answers to the relevant questions. Methodology.

Daily use was 8.2% last year; daily smoking is 8.2% this year#

WHI 2025 reported that 20.5% of urban professionals used nicotine. WHI 2026 reports 17.2%. The published categories differ, so these totals are not a direct measure of change.

WHI 2025 published three categories on a base of 3,436; this edition reports seven on a base of 7,223. The daily shares are numerically equal, but WHI 2025 called its category daily users, while WHI 2026 specifies smoking cigarettes or bidis. The earlier occasional category also included casual vaping.

WHI 2025 did not publish its original answer options, so the treatment of recent quitters, smokeless tobacco and replacement products cannot be established from its report. In 2026, recent quitters are a separate 3.2% and are excluded from current use. These definition differences prevent a direct conclusion that nicotine use rose, fell or stayed unchanged between editions.

The single-choice question cannot capture every product used by someone who uses several. “Quit in the last 12 months” does not establish sustained abstinence.

Men use nicotine three times as often as women, and the gap widens with every decade#

More than one in five answers from men chose a current-use option; about one in fourteen from women did. The difference is 14.5 points, on the 7,197 of 7,223 answers that fall into one of the two groups. Each of the four age bands shown tells the same story, and the difference grows across each one.

Male use is close to level across the four bands: 21.6% in the 20s, 21.4% in the 30s, 22.7% in the 40s, 23.9% in the 50s. The oldest of these bands has the highest share, but these are different age groups, not men followed as they grew older. Female use runs the other way, falling from 8.1% in the 20s to 4.7% in the 40s, a drop of about two-fifths, and that fall is what widens the difference. Whether women in their 40s and 50s use less because of their age or because of the decade they grew up in, this survey cannot say, and WHI 2025 could not either. What both editions do say is that the shape repeats: WHI 2025 found the same widening across its three generations, at 12.1, 16.7 and 23.2 points.

The chart covers ages 20–59. Female results in the 50s rest on only two nicotine-use answers out of 80; the widening gap is better supported through the 40s.

Smokeless tobacco is rare in this workforce and common outside it#

1.7% of nicotine answers chose smokeless tobacco — gutka, khaini, pan masala, the chewed and held products. Nationally, the Global Adult Tobacco Survey put smokeless use at 15.2% of urban Indian adults and 21.4% of all Indian adults. In the country at large it is the most used form of tobacco; in this workforce it is the least used, behind both daily and occasional smoking. A category worth 1.7% is easy to leave off a benefits plan, and three cuts argue against doing so.

Where nicotine use overall is close to level across age, smokeless use rises to a peak in the 40s and falls back. The four named sectors shown have smokeless shares 2.6 to 4.2 times the rate in IT and software. Sector labels do not establish whether a respondent works in an office or in the field. And income cuts it once: from ₹3 lakh to ₹25 lakh the share sits between 1.6% and 2.0% in no particular order, and the band below ₹3 lakh sits above all of them at 2.8%, on 907 answers.

Smokeless-tobacco cells are small: four sector rows contain only 5–11 use answers, and two income bands contain two each. These are tentative patterns, not precise population rates.

Customer-facing roles use nicotine at twice the engineering rate#

Across the report's six largest named sectors, current use runs from 12.6% to 25.4%.

The range across the job functions shown is wider.

Customer Success, Sales and Customer Support sit at the top. Pooled, they are 26.2% of 1,278 answers, just over twice the engineering rate; Customer Success alone is 2.6 times it, on 76 answers, one of the two thinnest rows here. Engineering and software development, the largest function at 2,136 answers, is the lowest of the functions with at least 75 answers, at 12.5% — a tenth of a point below the unclassified residual. The chain-smoking developer is a stereotype this data does not support.

Work mode moves the same way: office workers sit six points above home workers. Sector, function and work mode were never crossed with one another here, so this page cannot say how much of the role difference is really a work-mode difference, or how much of either is a sector difference. Each table shows an unadjusted association; none establishes which aspect of work explains the difference. The Work Model page reads the same three groups across the other lifestyle questions.

One answer in three from Kolkata chose a current-use option#

Kolkata is the highest reading of any city in the survey, and Hyderabad the lowest of the seven areas with at least 200 answers — more than twenty points between two cities in one economy. Among the five largest metros Delhi NCR leads and Bengaluru is third; across all seven areas here Bengaluru is fourth. WHI 2025 made a headline of Bengaluru topping its metros at 21.4%, on a five-city list that carried no figure for Delhi or Kolkata at all. Smaller areas are not ranked: Lucknow reads 29.2% on 65 answers, Jaipur 23.0% on 61.

City figures use self-reported residence.

Nicotine travels with alcohol: nearly eight times the rate among people who drink#

The sharpest contrast on this page. Among answers reporting any drinking at all, 37.9% chose a current nicotine option; among answers reporting never drinking, 4.9% did. It scales with frequency too — 32.6% among occasional drinkers, 54.1% among those drinking once or twice a week. The Alcohol page reads the same two behaviours from the other side.

Daily smokers report more stress than occasional smokers or non-users#

More than half of daily smokers rated their past week at 7 or above out of ten, against 39.1% of non-users — a 14.4-point difference, with occasional smokers in between at 41.8%. Which of the two came first, a survey taken at one moment cannot say. The overlap is large enough for one practical point regardless: for a big share of the people a cessation programme would target, stress is not a separate file. This cut covers three of the seven answers, 6,807 of the 7,223, so its non-user group does not include recent quitters.

What this page can and cannot tell you#

It can tell you what 7,223 responses reported in the spring of 2026, choosing one description out of seven. Smoking cigarettes or bidis dominates: five in six current users picked a smoking option. The habit is not spread evenly — it sits with men across the four age bands shown, with customer-facing roles, with the office over the home, and most of all with people who drink. Smokeless tobacco sits to one side of all of it: smaller, concentrated in different sectors and in the lowest income band, and requiring attention to oral health as well as cessation.

It cannot tell you whether nicotine use is rising or falling, because the published categories differ and the earlier questionnaire is unavailable. It does not track individual behaviour over time, and the survey responses are not linked to biomarker or claims records.