Number of smokers falls to a record low

From half of us in the 1970s to one in seven now

THE number of people who smoke cigarettes has reached a record low, according to official figures published yesterday.

Fewer than 7.5 million adults – around one in seven of the adult population – are now smokers, a share that has dropped by a quarter in just six years.

The decline is most marked among young adults. The count of teenagers and people in their early 20s who were recorded as users of cigarettes last year was 30 per cent down on numbers in 2011.

But the analysis from the Office for National Statistics suggested that while smoking is a habit being abandoned by the betteroff, professionals and the welleducated, it persists among the less wealthy.

It found unemployed people are twice as likely to smoke as those with jobs; people without qualifications are nearly four times more likely to smoke than people with university degrees; and people who live in unmarried cohabiting partnerships are more than twice as likely to smoke as married people.

The figures were hailed as a triumph by Public Health England, which said ‘ we are winning the war on tobacco’.

Chief executive Duncan Selbie said: ‘Smoking rates have dropped by almost a quarter in five years, a triumphant step in eliminating the nation’s biggest killer. The data shows we are winning the war on tobacco and that we are tantalisingly close to creating the first- ever smoke-free generation in England.

‘But that war will only be won if we make more progress in helping people from deprived areas and people suffering from poor mental health, where we know smoking rates remain stubbornly high.’

Almost half the population were smokers during the 1970s, but numbers fell as the health penalties of smoking became clear and the habit became less fashionable. In the mid-2000s the proportion of smokers stuck at slightly over 20 per cent, a figure that changed little after strict new laws in 2007 banned smoking in pubs, restaurants and offices. However, rates have come down fast since 2011.

Yesterday’s figures, based on the ONS Annual Population Survey of 320,000 homes each year, said there are now 7.4million smokers in the UK, down from around 10million in 2011. Some 17 per cent of men are smokers and 13.3 per cent of women. The group with the highest smoking rate is people aged between 25 and 34, of whom 19.7 per cent use cigarettes. But the figure stood at more than 25 per cent in 2011.

Among teenagers and those in their early twenties, a similar proportion were smokers in 2011. However, in the 18 to 24 age group the figure is now 17.8 per cent, a drop of nearly a third.

Smoking, the report found, is increasingly confined to people who are lower-paid or workless.

Nearly 30 per cent of unemployed people smoke, the ONS found, twice the figure among those with jobs. A similar share of people with no qualifications use cigarettes, against just 7.6 per cent of people with degrees. The report said six out of ten people who still smoke want to stop. More than one in 20 people, 5.5 per cent, say they have used an e-cigarette.