Prevalence surveys count smokers. Tax records count cigarettes, and they tell a blunter story. The cigarette sales decline in the three big English-speaking markets that publish official volume data has accelerated sharply: US taxable removals fell 14.3% in 2025 alone, and UK duty-paid clearances are down more than 60% in a decade.
How many cigarettes are still sold
Three governments publish a hard count of cigarettes entering the taxed market: the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau records taxable removals, HM Revenue & Customs records duty-paid clearances, and Statistics Canada records total sales. These are counts of sticks, not survey estimates, and they are collected for tax purposes rather than for public health.
Because the data is collected to raise money rather than to make a point, it is unusually reliable. A cigarette cannot be legally sold without the duty being accounted for, so the count is close to complete for the legal market, and the same office publishes it the same way every year. That makes year-on-year comparisons meaningful in a way that survey estimates, with their confidence intervals and changing questionnaires, often are not.
For the most recent full period, the three series read: 134.23 billion cigarettes removed for tax in the United States in calendar 2025, 12.22 billion cleared for duty in the United Kingdom in the 2025/26 financial year, and 12.29 billion sold in Canada in calendar 2025.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set out how the cessation picture behind those numbers has changed.
Decline rates by market
The US series is the longest clean run and the most striking, because the rate of decline keeps increasing. Losing 4% a year is a mature market shrinking. Losing 14% in one year is something else.
| Year | Billion sticks | Change on prior year |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 259.72 | — |
| 2018 | 226.92 | −5.2% |
| 2020 | 215.87 | +1.2% |
| 2022 | 187.11 | −8.1% |
| 2023 | 170.83 | −8.7% |
| 2024 | 156.65 | −8.3% |
| 2025 | 134.23 | −14.3% |
The United Kingdom has fallen further and faster. HMRC cleared 30.97 billion cigarettes for duty in 2015/16, 25.87 billion in 2019/20, 19.81 billion in 2022/23, 13.58 billion in 2024/25 and 12.22 billion in 2025/26. That is a 61% fall in ten years, and a further 10% in the most recent year alone.
Canada shows the same shape over a longer window. Statistics Canada recorded total cigarette sales of 37.27 billion in 2004, 15.33 billion in 2022, 13.30 billion in 2024 and 12.29 billion in 2025, a two-thirds fall across the period and 7.6% in the last year.
Where the line went the other way
One year in the last decade broke the pattern. US removals rose 1.2% in 2020, from 213.40 billion to 215.87 billion, interrupting a run of annual falls of 4% to 6%. It was a single year, and the decline resumed at 5.7% in 2021 and then accelerated.
The lesson is not that the trend reversed. It is that a national volume series responds to circumstances, and a year of disrupted routines, more time at home and less social pressure was enough to stall a decade-long fall. Whatever happened at the national level, it happened one household at a time.
Volume versus prevalence: why they differ
Prevalence and volume are different measurements and they move at different speeds. Prevalence counts how many people smoke at all. Volume counts how many cigarettes are consumed. Falling volume can mean fewer smokers, or the same smokers smoking less, and usually means both.
Canada shows the gap plainly. Adult smoking prevalence fell from 18.8% to 11.1% between 2015 and 2024, roughly a 41% relative fall. Cigarette sales fell far more steeply over a comparable window. The people who still smoke are getting through fewer cigarettes than smokers did a decade ago, which is why the volume line drops faster than the prevalence line.
That matters for anyone reading a headline. A country can report a stable smoking rate and a collapsing sales figure in the same year without either being wrong. Our summaries of cessation by demographic and quit success rates deal with the people side of the same question.
What replaced the lost volume
Some of it was replaced, and the filings say by what. Philip Morris International reported $16,854 million of 2025 net revenue from smoke-free products against $23,794 million from combustible tobacco, so smoke-free lines made up 41.5% of its net revenue, up from $12,840 million in 2023. That is a company rebuilding around the categories that are not counted in a cigarette volume series.
The United Kingdom offers a second illustration, this time within combustibles. HMRC clearances of hand-rolling tobacco went the opposite way for years, rising from 6,118 tonnes in 2015/16 to a peak of 8,742 tonnes in 2020/21 as smokers traded down to a cheaper format. Then that figure collapsed too, to 3,338 tonnes in 2025/26. Trading down delayed the decline in one category; it did not prevent it.
Rising prices and the revenue paradox
Here is the part that confuses people. Volumes are collapsing, and the largest manufacturer’s revenue is going up. Philip Morris net revenue rose from $35,174 million in 2023 to $37,878 million in 2024 and $40,648 million in 2025, while cigarette consumption fell across most developed markets.
The mechanism is price. Manufacturers raise prices faster than volumes fall, and annual duty escalators give cover for those increases because the shelf price was rising anyway. The full arithmetic of what that means for a pack is in our breakdown of how much of a pack is tax, and the company side is in what the tobacco industry actually makes.
For a smoker the practical consequence is straightforward. Fewer people around you are buying, and each pack you buy costs more than the last. Both lines move against you at once.
What these numbers do not capture
Every volume series has boundaries, and reading them honestly matters more than quoting the biggest number.
- Duty-paid only. UK clearances measure product released for consumption with duty paid. Cigarettes bought abroad or bought illicitly are outside the count, so clearances overstate the fall in actual consumption by an amount nobody can measure precisely.
- Different clocks. The US and Canadian series are calendar years; the UK series runs April to March. Comparing a UK financial year directly with a US calendar year introduces a few months of slippage.
- Three markets, not the world. These are the three official series read for this page. Global totals are not covered here, and the picture in lower-income countries, where prevalence is still rising in some places, is different.
- Sticks, not people. A volume series cannot tell you how many people quit. That is what prevalence data is for, and the two should be read together.
Being on the right side of the trend
Social proof is usually a weak argument for anything. Here it is unusually strong, because the direction is not in dispute and the size of the move is not marginal. Half the cigarettes that were sold in the United States a decade ago are not being sold now. Three fifths of the British market has gone. In Canada it is two thirds since 2004.
If you still smoke, you are not part of a stable majority doing an ordinary thing. You are part of a shrinking group, in markets where regulation is tightening. The United Kingdom’s approach to that is covered in our explainer on the generational ban, and the age pattern driving the volume collapse is in our youth data.
The cost side of staying in that shrinking group is set out in our page on the economic cost.
Making your own line go to zero
None of this is an argument that quitting is easy. It is an argument that it is normal. The volume data describes millions of people who used to buy cigarettes every week and now do not, and almost none of them did it in one attempt.
iQuit: Stop Smoking & Quit is free on Google Play and the App Store. It counts your own volume rather than the nation’s: cigarettes avoided, days smoke-free, money saved in your own currency, cravings logged with their triggers, and health milestones as they arrive. The community section carries success stories from people whose personal series went to zero, which is the version of this trend that actually helps.
Frequently Asked Questions
How fast are cigarette sales falling?
Faster every year in the markets that publish volume data. US taxable removals fell 14.3% in 2025, after falls of 8.3% in 2024 and 8.7% in 2023. UK duty-paid clearances fell 10.0% in 2025/26 and Canadian sales fell 7.6% in 2025.
How many cigarettes are sold in the United States each year?
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau recorded 134,231,886,768 cigarettes removed for tax in calendar 2025, about 134.2 billion sticks. That compares with 259.7 billion in 2015, a fall of 48% in ten years.
How many cigarettes are sold in the UK?
HM Revenue & Customs cleared 12.22 billion cigarettes for duty in the 2025/26 financial year, against 30.97 billion in 2015/16. That is a 61% fall in a decade. Clearances count only duty-paid product, so cross-border and illicit purchases are outside the figure.
Is this the same as the number of smokers falling?
No, and the difference is important. Prevalence counts people who smoke; volume counts cigarettes consumed. Volume falls faster because the remaining smokers also smoke less. Canadian adult prevalence fell from 18.8% to 11.1% between 2015 and 2024 while sales fell much more steeply.
Have cigarette sales ever risen recently?
Once in the last decade in the United States. Taxable removals rose 1.2% in 2020, from 213.40 billion to 215.87 billion sticks, breaking a run of annual falls. The decline resumed at 5.7% in 2021 and has accelerated since.
If volumes are collapsing, why are tobacco companies still profitable?
Because price rises outpace volume falls, and because revenue is shifting to other products. Philip Morris net revenue rose from $35,174 million in 2023 to $40,648 million in 2025, and smoke-free products supplied 41.5% of that 2025 figure.
What happened to hand-rolling tobacco?
It rose while cigarettes fell, then fell too. UK clearances of hand-rolling tobacco went from 6,118 tonnes in 2015/16 to a peak of 8,742 tonnes in 2020/21 as smokers traded down to a cheaper format, before dropping to 3,338 tonnes in 2025/26.
Do these figures include illegal cigarettes?
No. All three series count product entering the legal, taxed market: taxable removals in the United States, duty-paid clearances in the United Kingdom and recorded sales in Canada. Illicit and cross-border purchases are outside them, so the true fall in consumption is smaller than the fall in these numbers.
How many cigarettes does Canada sell now?
Statistics Canada recorded total cigarette sales of 12.29 billion in 2025, down from 13.30 billion in 2024 and 37.27 billion in 2004. That is a 7.6% fall in one year and a 67% fall since 2004.
Where can I check these numbers myself?
All three are free downloads. The TTB publishes a Tobacco Products National Report workbook with one sheet per year, HMRC publishes the Tobacco Bulletin with a clearances table, and Statistics Canada publishes table 16-10-0044-01 as a full CSV.
Join the line that is already going down
iQuit is free on Google Play and the App Store. Track cigarettes avoided, days smoke-free and money saved in your own currency, log cravings with their triggers, and see your own volume reach zero.
Download iQuit Free on Google Play Download on the App Store
Sources: TTB, Tobacco Products National Report; HM Revenue & Customs, Tobacco Bulletin; Statistics Canada, table 16-10-0044-01; Philip Morris International Form 10-K, financial year 2025.
