Sharp increase in middle-class women smoking 

The Guardian newspaper reports a 10-year study which shows that the smoking rate fell among working-class women aged 18-25 while rising among middle-class women of the same age.

Pressure to cut smoking rates

Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death accounting for 76,000 deaths annually.

The Guardian reported that experts from UCL examined data from nearly 200,000 adult participants in the Smoking Toolkit Study, a monthly survey of adults in England. Just over 44,000 were women aged 18-45.

The study, funded by Cancer Research UK and published in BMC Medicine, found that while overall smoking rates declined between 2013 and 2023, the proportion of women aged 18-45 from higher socioeconomic backgrounds who smoked rose from 12% to 15%.

In contrast, the research showed that there was a drop in the proportion of less advantaged women of the same age who smoked, from 29% to 22%, while smoking rates among men of all backgrounds remained stable.

Number of young women vaping daily in the UK more than triples

Dr Sarah Jackson, the lead author of the research, said: “We don’t know why younger affluent women are smoking more. Future studies could explore whether social media may be increasing uptake in this cohort, or whether they are less able to use strategies or support to avoid long-term relapse … We need to do a lot more research to find out.”

Surprisingly, the study indicates that most smokers now predominantly use rollups, with 54% of adults of all ages mainly or exclusively using hand-rolled cigarettes, up from 42% in 2013.

The trend was particularly marked among female smokers aged 18 to 45, where the proportion who said they mainly or exclusively smoked hand-rolled cigarettes increased from 41% to 61%.

The report said financial pressures may have hit women harder, with higher rates of job loss during the pandemic and a greater burden of housework and childcare.

According to the authors of the study this probably contributed to the reduction in smoking prevalence among women from less advantaged social backgrounds and encouraged those who did not stop to switch to hand-rolled products as a way to afford to continue to smoke.

A sharp increase in vaping

Vaping among all adults aged 18 to 45 more than tripled in the decade to 2023, with the bulk of the increase occurring after 2021. By 2023, one in five adults under 45 were vaping.

A new report from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has called for more action to prevent vaping among children.

The RCP study proposed restrictions on the promotion of e-cigarettes on social media, making e-cigarettes less affordable for young people and less appealing through plain packaging.

No room for complacency in the fight against smoking

John Waldron, a senior policy and public affairs officer at Action on Smoking and Health, is quoted saying that UCL’s study demonstrated that there could be no complacency about continued declines in smoking rates, “It is of particular concern that the increases have been seen in women of child-bearing age, as smoking in pregnancy doesn’t just threaten the lives of women but also their unborn children.”

Ann McNeill, a professor of tobacco addiction at King’s College London, said: “Researchers and clinicians have worked tirelessly over the last few decades to educate people on the harms of smoking tobacco, and to a large extent we have been successful. It’s worrying therefore that we should see any increases in smoking in any social demographic.”

She added: “Smoking, in any form, is uniquely deadly. We need to move quickly to understand why this group of women in particular are risking their health, despite all of the evidence.”

On Tuesday 16th April 2024 MPs voted by 383 to 67 in favour of the prime minister’s bill to make it illegal for anyone born in 2009 or later to buy tobacco products in the UK.

What is Allen Carr’s Easyway’s view?

John Dicey, Global CEO of Allen Carr’s Easyway, comments, “The increase in vaping is extremely worrying, and the prospect of large numbers of people remaining addicted to nicotine long term is a public health timebomb. It’s a case of weighing the advantages of the harm reduction element of vaping against the downsides of continued, perhaps even lifetime, nicotine addiction as well as the disturbing increase of youngsters who have never smoked being lured into nicotine addiction via vapes. The increase in smoking rates amongst any demographic is troubling and these results indicate that smokers across all demographics should be given more help to quit”.

Further reading

• Read the full report on the study in The Guardian
• Find out how to quit smoking or vaping with Allen Carr’s Easyway