Smoking rates in some places in England have risen for the first time in nearly twenty years, research has found. Academics from UCL examined smoking data for over 350,000 adults in England over an 18-year period.
They found that although the proportion of those who smoked either cigarettes, pipes, cigars, or other types of tobacco had fallen from 25.3% in 2006 to 16.5% in 2024, progress since 2020 has flatlined. Some areas have seen a rise in smoking rates.
The study was published in the journal Addiction. It found that smoking rates had risen 10% in the south of England between 2020 and 2024. Up north, rates had fallen by 9.7% over the same period.
Previous research has hinted that women are smoking more and rrates among young adults have declined the most. They found little change among the older age groups. An increase in those trying and successfully quitting suggests that there may have been an increase in relapses in recent years.
The biggest jump in smoking rates was in the south-west. UCL found it had risen by 17% to a figure of 18.7% between 2020 and 2024. Rates in the south-east and London meanwhile had climbed by 9% and 8% respectively.
Extrapolating this to the entire population means an estimated 7.5 million adults smoke in England. Of them, 3.3 million smoke in London, the south-east, and south-west. That’s almost 400,000 more than in 2020.
By comparison, 2 million people smoke in the north of England, 160,000 less than in 2020.
“It’s vital that stop smoking services are made easily and equally available across the country,” Lead author Dr Sarah Jackson, of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care said, “so that everyone – wherever they live – can access the right tools to quit for good.”
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