Smoking of tobacco is predicted to cause approximately six million deaths worldwide in 2014. Responding
eectively to this epidemic requires a thorough understanding of how smoking behaviour is transmitted and
modied. Here, we present a new mathematical model of the social dynamics that cause cigarette smoking to
spread in a population. Our model predicts that more individualistic societies will show faster adoption and
cessation of smoking. Evidence from a new century-long composite data set on smoking prevalence in 25 countries
supports the model, with direct implications for public health interventions around the world. Our results suggest
that dierences in culture between societies can measurably aect the temporal dynamics of a social spreading
process, and that these eects can be understood via a quantitative mathematical model matched to observations.