Data, transformed through aggregation and analysis into useful information, are key elements for decision making. This notion is true in general and has become a precept for promotion of health and control of disease. Tobacco use globally is the main preventable contributor to poor health and premature death.1 In The Lancet, Gary Giovino and colleagues2 describe the acquisition of high-quality data for tobacco use from 14 countries through the employment of well-designed and well-implemented surveys, the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), with 16 countries studied in total.