The pressures of modern-day living, including dealing with a pandemic and increased social isolation, are pushing more young people into taking up smoking, a study has suggested.
Despite government plans to create a “smoke-free generation” by gradually phasing out the sale of tobacco to teenagers, the study, published in the journal BMC Medicine, has suggested the decades-long decline in smoking in England has nearly ground to a halt since the pandemic.
The study, led by researchers at University College London, looked at survey responses from 101,960 adults between June 2017 and August 2022.
Prior to the pandemic (from June 2017 to February 2020), smoking prevalence fell by 5.2% per year, but this rate of decline slowed to 0.3% during the pandemic (from April 2020 to August 2022).
Based on the survey responses, the researchers estimated the proportion of people who smoked in England as 16.2% in June 2017, falling to 15.1% by the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
However, nearly two-and-a-half years later, in August 2022, this figure was virtually unchanged, at 15.0%, suggesting the decline had plateaued.
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Although the pandemic saw a 120% rise in the proportion of people giving up and a 40% rise in attempts to quit, this was offset by an increase in the number of people taking up smoking, including an increase among 18- to 24-year-olds.
The researchers argued: “In England, the rate of decline in adult smoking prevalence stagnated during the Covid-19 pandemic through to 2022. At the start of the pandemic, a potential reduction in smoking prevalence among middle-aged adults and increases in quitting among smokers may have been offset by an increase in smoking among young adults. The slowing in the rate of decline was pronounced in more advantaged social grades.”
“Smoking prevalence has been falling among adults in England at a steady rate for more than 20 years,” said Dr Sarah Jackson, of UCL’s Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care and lead author, citing evidence from the Office for National Statistics.
Yet, the latest study highlighted the need to make “bold policy action more urgent”, Dr Jackson continued. The government was already not on track to meet its target for England to be smoke-free by 2030, she argued, adding: “This study suggests we could be even further off track than we thought.”
Higher levels of stress and social isolation among younger adults could be partly to blame, along with a range of other factors, the study, funded by the charity Cancer Research UK, suggested.
For example, the number of people able to access local free stop-smoking services also fell dramatically because of Covid-19 restrictions.
“These findings demonstrate why we can’t be complacent when it comes to tobacco,” said Dr Ian Walker, Cancer Research UK’s executive director of policy. “It can be easy to start smoking but notoriously hard to quit.”
As highlighted by Dr Jackson, as well as creating a smoke-free generation, the UK government is aiming for England to be smoke-free by 2030, defined as having average adult smoking rates of 5% or less.
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