Progress on smoking stalls as younger people take up the habit

Decades of progress made in cutting the number of people who smoke has ground to a halt since the pandemic say researchers.

The Cancer Research UK funded study based on monthly survey responses from between 2017 and 2022 found that before Covid-19, smoking prevalence was falling by a rate of around 5.2% a year.

But since April 2020, this rate of decline has practically stopped and has been around 0.3%.

The stalled rate of decline was particularly pronounced among advantaged social groups – those in professional, managerial or clerical jobs – the University College London team reported in BMC Medicine.

A potential reduction in smoking prevalence among middle-aged adults spotted at the start of the pandemic was also found to have been an increase in smoking among young adults, the team reported.

Overall, there was a 40% increase in quit attempts during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic and a doubling of the proportion of people stopping smoking but this was offset by a rise in the number of people taking up smoking during the same period, they concluded.

Smoking prevalence increased among 18-to24-year-olds at the start of the pandemic, and decreased among 45-to-65-year-olds at the same time, the figures from the Smoking Toolkit Study suggest.

On the basis of the survey which involved 101,960 adults overall, the researchers estimated the proportion of smokers in England in June 2017 was 16.2%, falling to 15.1% by the start of the pandemic.

Almost two and a half years later, in August 2022, this proportion was virtually unchanged, at 15.0%, they said.

The researchers speculated that the switch to home working for many non-manual jobs during the pandemic may have contributed to loneliness and poor mental health, and reducing the inclination to quit smoking.

Manual workers may have had more financial disruption, leading to smoking becoming less affordable, as well as increased exposure to Covid-19, making quitting a higher priority for health reasons, they noted.

Lead author Dr Sarah Jackson, a principal research fellow at the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care said: ‘Smoking prevalence has been falling among adults in England at a steady rate for more than 20 years.

‘Our data show that this decline has stalled, with an increase in quitting potentially having been offset by a rise in people taking up smoking or an increase in late relapse.’

She added: ‘These findings make bold policy action more urgent. The Government was already not on track to meet its target for England to be smokefree by 2030. This study shows we are even further off track than we thought.’

The UK Government has set a target for England to be smokefree by 2030, which is classed as an adult smoking prevalence of 5% or less.

In the King’s Speech in November, a range of smoking cessation measures were announced including more funding.

During his speech closing the Conservative Conference in Manchester last month, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proposed to raise the smoking age by one year each year to prevent young people from ever taking up smoking.

Dr Ian Walker, Cancer Research UK’s executive director of policy, said: ‘These findings demonstrate why we can’t be complacent when it comes to tobacco. It can be easy to start smoking but notoriously hard to quit.

‘World-leading measures, such as changing the age of sale of tobacco, alongside critical funding to boost smoking cessation services, are essential to help us achieve a Smokefree UK.’