Smoking in England in sharp decline

28 August 2019

The number of cigarettes smoked in England has fallen by almost a quarter since 2011, according to UCL research funded by Cancer Research UK.

The drop equates to 118 million fewer cigarettes being smoked every month, and was established by looking at sales data combined with the habits of 135,000 smokers over a seven year period.

Currently 16% of English people aged 16 and over smoke, but Dr Sarah Jackson from UCL’s Tobacco and Alcohol research group emphasised the downward trend in numbers: ‘It’s brilliant that over a billion fewer cigarettes are being sold and smoked in England every year. The decline in national cigarette consumption has been dramatic and exceeded the decline in smoking prevalence, which, over the same time period, was around 15%. This means that not only are fewer people smoking, but those who continue to smoke are smoking less.’

Smoking remains the biggest preventable cause of cancer in the UK. It causes 7 out of 10 lung cancer cases in this country, with lung cancer itself being the biggest cause of cancer-related deaths. For more information, please see the Cancer Research UK website.

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