Cigarette smoking habits among adults in the UK, including how many people smoke, differences between population groups, changes over time and use of e-cigarettes.
Release date : 1 October 2024
Next release : To be announced
Version : Latest
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Contact : Health.data@ons.gov.uk
people smoked cigarettes (aged 18 and above) in the UK in 2023
highest propotion of current smokers (14%)
adults aged 16 years and over uses an e-cigatette daily or occasionally
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) collects data on adult smoking habits through two main surveys. The Annual Population Survey (APS) gives headline indicators of the number of adults aged 18 years and over who smoke in the UK. The Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) collects information on e-cigarette use among those aged 16 years and over in Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland), as well as smoking habits and the intention to quit smoking.
Read more about these surveys in Section 10 : Data sources and quality.
The following guide explains what you can and cannot do when interpreting and using the statistics in this release.
You can
You cannot
Find more information on the statistics in this release in Section 10: Data sources and quality. Further detail on our data collection and analysis methods is available in our methodology article.
The Annual Population Survey (APS) gives headline indicators on the number of adults aged 18 years and over who smoke in the UK. In this survey, a smoker is defined as someone who smokes nowadays.
The estimated proportion of people who smoke in the UK has been falling since Annual Population Survey (APS) records began in 2011.
In 2023, 11.9% of adults aged 18 years or over (6.0 million people) were current smokers, according to APS data.
This is a decrease from 2022 (12.9% of the population), although not a statistically significant one. An increase or decrease is statistically significant if it is likely that chance, or the variable nature of the samples, did not cause it. However, this decrease follows a long-term downward trend. The proportion of current smokers has fallen by 8.3 percentage points since 2011 (20.2% of the population).
The APS provides the official measure of smoking prevalence in England. It is used to monitor progress towards the UK government’s target of achieving a smokefree England by 2030, with smoking prevalence at 5% or lower.
In the UK in 2023, as shown in Figure 1, the percentage of adult smokers in:
Excel spreadsheet (XLSX format, 26KB)
Current smoker estimates for each local authority (Figure 2) can vary a lot from year to year because of small sample sizes. So, we have used a five-year average to give a clearer picture of how smoking prevalence varies between local authority areas, rather than focusing on one year’s figures. You can still find annual smoking estimates by local authority in our accompanying Smoking habits in the UK and its constituent countries dataset.
Local authorities with the highest average percentage of current smokers are:
Local authorities with the lowest average percentage of current smokers are:
Excel spreadsheet (XLSX format, 40KB)
Men were more likely to smoke than women in the UK in 2023, as seen in previous years. Around 3.4 million men (13.7%) and around 2.6 million women (10.1%) reported being current smokers.
When considering the population by age (Figure 3):
Excel spreadsheet (XLSX format, 19KB)
Smoking prevalence is known to be associated with a variety of characteristics, such as relationship status, education level and socio-economic status.
When looking at smoking prevalence by economic activity status in the UK in 2023, those who were defined as unemployed had a higher proportion of current smokers (19.7%), compared with those who were in paid employment (11.4%) and those who were economically inactive (12.2%).
Of those who were classified as being in a “routine and manual” socio-economic classification, according to the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC), 20.2% were current smokers, compared with 7.9% of “managerial and professional occupations”. This follows the same trend since data collection began in 2014 (Figure 4).
Excel spreadsheet (XLSX format, 19KB)
Of people who had no qualifications, 27.4% were current smokers in 2023. This is higher than among those who reported their highest level of education as “Other qualifications” (21.8%), and those who reported GCSEs as their highest level of education (18.0%). Those who reported a degree or equivalent as their highest level of education had the lowest percentage of current smokers (5.8%) (Figure 5).
Excel spreadsheet (XLSX format, 40KB)
A wider range of data on the characteristics of cigarette smokers from the APS is available in our accompanying dataset. This includes estimates by:
More information on smoking prevalence by socio-economic status can be found in our Deprivation and the impact on smoking prevalence in England and Wales: 2017 to 2021 bulletin.
In this section, we describe data from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN), which covers adults aged 16 years and over in Great Britain. In the OPN, a smoker is someone who reports smoking cigarettes, even only occasionally.
The percentage of adults in Great Britain aged 16 years and over who said they smoked cigarettes decreased from 11.2% in 2022 to 10.5% in 2023. This continues the downward trend seen since 1974.
This is in-line with the reduction in smoking prevalence seen in the Annual Population Survey (APS), which covers the UK and adults aged 18 years and over.
The percentage of people who indicated that they had previously smoked and had now quit increased to 70.9% in 2023, compared with 69.4% in 2022 (Figure 6).
Excel spreadsheet (XLSX format, 19KB)
Of the people who currently smoked in 2023, 55.9% intended to quit smoking. Almost a quarter of current smokers (23.8%) intended to quit within the next three months.
Current smokers who intended to quit in the next three months were more likely to wait longer to have their first cigarette of the day (Figure 7).
Excel spreadsheet (XLSX format, 15KB)
Data for e-cigarette use come from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN), which covers adults aged 16 years and over in Great Britain.
An estimated 5.9% of people aged 16 years and over in Great Britain reported using an e-cigarette daily in 2023, up from 5.2% in 2022.
A further 3.9% reported using an e-cigarette occasionally, up from 3.5% in 2022 (Figure 8).
This equates to around 5.1 million e-cigarette users in Great Britain.
Excel spreadsheet (XLSX format, 17KB)
Current and ex-smokers were more likely to report using an e-cigarette in 2023 (31.6% and 18.7%, respectively).
Around 2.8% of those who had never smoked reported using an e-cigarette daily or occasionally.
The number of people who had never smoked but reported using an e-cigarette daily doubled to 1.2% (around 400,000 people) between 2022 and 2023.
When looking at the whole population, whether they smoked cigarettes or not, people more likely to use an e-cigarette were:
Excel spreadsheet (XLSX format, 17KB)
E-cigarette use has continued to increase most substantially among younger people aged 25 to 34 years.
The percentage of men aged 25 to 34 years who were daily e-cigarette users rose to 10.2% in 2023, from 7.4% in 2022. However, this increase was not statistically significant.
Of women aged 16 to 24 years, 8.7% were daily e-cigarette users in 2023. This is the highest usage recorded in this group since data collection began in 2014. While the increase between 2022 and 2023 was not statistically significant, it follows a large increase between 2021 and 2022 (4.8 percentage points).
Smoking habits in the UK and its constituent countries
Dataset | Released 1 October 2024
Annual data on the proportion of adults who currently smoke, the proportion of
ex-smokers and proportion of those who have never smoked, by sex and age.
E-cigarette use in Great Britain
Dataset | Released 1 October 2024
Annual data on the proportion of adults in Great Britain who use e-cigarettes,
by different characteristics such as age, sex and cigarette smoking status.
E-cigarette use in England
Dataset | Released 1 October 2024
Annual data on the proportion of adults in England who use e-cigarettes,
by different characteristics such as age, sex and cigarette smoking status.
Adult smoking habits in Great Britain
Dataset | Released 1 October 2024
Annual data on the proportion of adults in Great Britain who smoke cigarettes,
cigarette consumption, the proportion who have never smoked cigarettes and the
proportion of smokers who have quit, by sex and age over time.
Adult smoking habits in England
Dataset | Released 1 October 2024
Annual data on the proportion of adults in England who smoke cigarettes,
cigarette consumption, the proportion who have never smoked cigarettes and the
proportion of smokers who have quit, by sex and age over time.
The Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) defines cigarette smokers who have quit as those who said they have smoked cigarettes regularly, but do not currently smoke. This is provided as a proportion of those who have ever smoked cigarettes regularly.
The Annual Population Survey (APS) defines current cigarette smokers as those who said they smoke cigarettes nowadays. The OPN defines current cigarette smokers as those who said they smoked cigarettes, even if occasionally. Current cigarette smokers are provided as a proportion of those in the population.
In this release, we discuss both deaths "involving" a particular cause, and deaths "due to" a particular cause. Those "involving" a cause include all deaths that had the cause mentioned on the death certificate, whether as the underlying or a contributory cause. Deaths "due to" a particular cause refer to the underlying cause of death.
We use the International Labour Organization (ILO) definitions of economic activity. Unemployed people are those who are not currently in work but who are looking for work. The group “economically inactive” contains those who are not in work, and not looking for work; this includes retired people and students. More information on economic activity can be found in our Labour Force Survey user guide.
The people who respond to the survey may differ from the population because of random sampling (sampling error), or because of other factors, for example, because some could not be contacted or refused to participate (non-sampling error). These non-random effects can lead to sample bias if they are not full adjusted for through weighting.
Statistical significance has been determined using 95% confidence intervals. This provides the range of values that we are 95% confident the true value lies within. The 95% confidence intervals for the estimates are available in our accompanying datasets. We have deemed two estimates to be statistically different from one another if their confidence intervals do not overlap. One limitation of this approach is that some pairs of estimates that are statistically different from one another will not be identified as such.
Survey mode is the method that is used to collect information from respondents. There are different types of survey mode, such as face-to-face, telephone, online and mixed mode.
Data on smoking habits in the UK come from the Annual Population Survey (APS). The survey covers residents of the UK aged 18 years and over. For more information on APS survey methodology, see our APS Quality and Methodology Information (QMI).
The change from a mixed mode to telephone-only data collection for the APS, introduced at the end of March 2020, resulted in a potentially unrepresentative sample. The change in the mode of data collection meant our smoking prevalence estimates for 2020 were not comparable with the estimates of previous years. We have updated our weighting methodology to improve comparability of our smoking prevalence estimates for 2020 and subsequent years. For more details about this update, see our Adult smoking habits in the UK methodology.
The APS is the official measure of smoking prevalence in England. It is used to monitor and track progress towards a smokefree generation, a goal outlined in The Khan review: making smoking obsolete.
The initial target of the Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC’s) Tobacco Control Plan was to reduce smoking prevalence among adults in England to 12% or less by the end of 2022. This has been replaced by a new target: achieving a smokefree England by 2030, with smoking prevalence at 5% or lower.
DHSC’s recently published policy paper Stopping the start: Our new plan to create a smoke-free generation details important measures to achieve this goal.
Data on smoking and e-cigarette use for Great Britain for those aged 16 years and over come from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN). In March 2020, the OPN was transformed from a monthly to weekly omnibus survey to understand how the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic was affecting life in Great Britain. As a result, the number of questions relating to smoking and vaping habits was greatly reduced. For more information on the OPN survey methodology, see our Opinions and Lifestyle Survey QMI.
The analysis reported in this article used survey weights to make estimates representative of the population. Survey weights take into account observed patterns of non-response and attrition, as well as the distribution of population characteristics, like sex and age, where someone lives, and socio-economic characteristics.
We have made some changes to this bulletin to test new ways of effectively communicating uncertainty in our data. These include:
We will continue to gather user feedback before making a longer-term decision on these changes. Datasets published alongside this release will continue in their existing format.
In this release, we discuss both deaths "involving" a particular cause, and deaths "due to" a particular cause. Those "involving" a cause include all deaths that had the cause mentioned on the death certificate, whether as the underlying or a contributory cause. Deaths "due to" a particular cause refer to the underlying cause of death.
The number of weeks in the year will affect how many days the data cover in the year. Leap years require a 53rd week to be added to the end of the calendar year. The last leap year was in 2020. It is more appropriate to compare 2020 figures with the average for Week 52 than with a single year from five years previously. Read more on the data coverage in this bulletin in Section 1 of our Coronavirus and mortality in England and Wales methodology.
This bulletin is based mainly on the date that deaths are registered, not the date of death. In this bulletin, we consider deaths to be registered within the previous seven days, when the time between death occurrence and r egistration is between zero and six days. The number of days between death occurrence and registration depends on many factors and there might be longer delays sometimes, particularly if the death is referred to a coroner. Read more in our Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales: 2022 article.
For registration delays, we look at deaths registered each week and check how many out of these occurred within the previous seven days. For instance, for deaths registered on 8 January, this will include deaths occurring between 2 and 8 January. This will be different to numbers of deaths occurring that week.
From the week ending 26 February 2021 (Week 9), new International Classification of Diseases codes for COVID-19 issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) were used for deaths involving COVID-19. Read more in our Coronavirus and mortality in England and Wales methodology.
Further information on data quality, legislation and procedures relating to mortality, and a glossary of terms, is available in our User guide to mortality statistics methodology.
These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in February 2013. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".
More quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses and how the data were created is available in our Mortality statistics in England and Wales QMI.
Other statisitics producers also publish data on adult smoking habits. We have labelled them as highly, broadly and not comparable with ONS data. This is to understand if you can compare or combine them with ONS data.
Highly comparable
You can directly compare or combine these data with ONS data. This is because the data sources and definitions that the statistics producer used are the same, or almost the same, as those we used.
Broadly comparable
You can compare or combine these data with ONS data. However, there are a few differences in the data sources or definitions or both that the statistics producer used. This could affect how you use or interpret any compared or combined statistics.
Not comparable
You cannot compare or combine these data with ONS data because the data sources or definitions or both are entirely different to those we used.
Read why these data are highly, broadly or not compatible with ONS data in our Adult smoking habits in the UK methodology
Highly comparable with ONS data
Broadly comparable with ONS data
Not comparable with ONS data
Broadly comparable with ONS data
Broadly comparable with ONS data
Tool to get data down to local authority level on tobacco use and harm.
Impact that the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had on data collection, how this has influenced estimates of smoking prevalence and the comparability of these estimates.
Office for National Statistics (ONS), released 1 October 2024, ONS website, statistical bulletin, Adult smoking habits in the UK: 2023
Population Health Monitoring Group
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