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Statistical article

Adult smoking habits in the UK: 2023

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

Edition : Latest
View previous releases

Contact : Health.data@ons.gov.uk

Headline facts and figures

6.0 million

people smoked cigarettes (aged 18 and above) in the UK in 2023

25 to 34 age

highest propotion of current smokers (14%)

5.1 million

adults aged 16 years and over uses an e-cigatette daily or occasionally

Definitions

Cigarette smokers who have quit

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.

Current cigarette smokers

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.

Current e-cigarette users

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.

Economic activity

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.

Sampling and non-sampling error

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

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

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.