More young people in the UK took up smoking. Photo credit: Susanne Nilsson, Creative Commons.
The decade-long decline in the UK smoking rate appears to be stalling to almost a halt since the pandemic, says a recent study published in BMC Medicine.
The study by Dr. Sarah E. Jackson et al conducted a survey involving close to 102,000 adults from June 2017 to August 2022 to evaluate the smoking rates across the wider population.
Study results found that prior to the pandemic, the prevalence of smoking among adults decreased by 5.2% annually. However, this rate dwindled to just 0.3% annually from spring 2020 to summer 2022. The proportion of adults who smoked decreased from slightly over 16% to 15% from June 2017 to August 2022, with the majority of this reduction occurring before the pandemic.
Study researchers believe a noticeable increase in the number of smokers aged 18 to 24 during the pandemic may have contributed to this. The study also found that smoking decreased among individuals aged 45 to 65; the slowdown in the smoking decline was most noticeable among advantaged social groups; and some of the slowdown could be attributed to former smokers reverting to the habit.
Dr. Jackson told BBC that study results suggested a “step change” in young adults smoking. According to her, young people may have started smoking because they believed e-cigarettes were equally bad for them, pointing out that, "There has a been lot of talk about vaping and there has been a real disconnect about the risks of vaping and risks of smoking among young people. The risks of vaping are substantially lower than the risks of smoking, yet most of the concern is about young people vaping,".
Other experts, including Caitlin Notley, a professor of addiction sciences at the University of East Anglia, echoed Dr. Jackson’s apprehensions. Notley suggested that the intense media focus on e-cigarettes “may be contributing to inaccurate harm perception” of these products.