UK Smoking Statistics 2026: Rates, Quitting and Vaping

The latest UK smoking statistics 2026 readers can rely on come from data collected in 2024, and they show the lowest smoking rate on record: 10.6% of adults, or around 5.3 million people, smoked cigarettes. That figure comes from the Office for National Statistics, whose most recent bulletin was released in November 2025. No official source has published a 2025 or 2026 prevalence figure yet, so every number below carries its data year, its survey, and a link to the page it came from.

Key UK Smoking Figures at a Glance

The table pulls the headline numbers into one place. The two main surveys measure slightly different things, so the survey name sits next to each figure. The Annual Population Survey (APS) covers adults aged 18 and over across the whole UK. The Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) covers people aged 16 and over in Great Britain only, and it counts occasional smokers too.

The decline is long and steady. According to the ONS Adult smoking habits in the UK: 2024 bulletin, the rate fell from 11.1% in 2023 to 10.6% in 2024, and it has dropped 9.6 percentage points since 2011. For the worldwide picture, the global smoking cessation statistics put these UK numbers in context.

Smoking Rates in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

The APS gives one comparable figure for each of the four nations. Scotland had the highest rate in 2024 and England the lowest, but the gap between them is less than two percentage points.

The devolved governments do not use the APS as their official measure. Each runs its own national health survey, and those surveys report different numbers because they ask different questions in different periods. The ONS bulletin lists both sets, and the table below shows them side by side.

Local differences are much larger than national ones. Using a five-year average for 2020 to 2024, the ONS found the highest smoking rates in Fenland (19.8%) and Blackpool (19.7%). The lowest were in Woking (4.2%) and Epsom and Ewell (4.8%). In other words, some council areas have already reached the smokefree threshold while others sit at almost four times that level.

Who Smokes: Age, Sex and Occupation

Men still smoke more than women. In 2024 about 3.0 million men (12.3%) and 2.3 million women (9.0%) were current smokers, according to the ONS.

By age

People aged 25 to 34 had the highest smoking rate in 2024, at 12.6%. People aged 65 and over had the lowest, at 7.1%. The most dramatic change has been among young adults: smoking among 18 to 24 year olds fell from 25.7% in 2011 to 8.1% in 2024, a drop of 17.6 percentage points. Our breakdown of smoking rates by age group covers the same pattern in other countries.

By occupation, work status and education

Smoking tracks income and education closely. The table shows the size of the gaps the ONS reported for 2024.

Mental health is another major divide. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), drawing on 2025 government profile data for England, reports that 24.0% of adults with a long-term mental health condition smoke. Among adults with serious mental illness the figure is 40.5%. ASH also reports that 6.1% of mothers in England were smoking at the time of delivery in 2024/25, down from 11.4% in 2014/15.

Vaping in the UK: Current Use and Dual Use

2024 was the first year in which more adults in Great Britain vaped than smoked. The ONS OPN estimated that 10.0% of people aged 16 and over used an e-cigarette daily or occasionally, about 5.4 million people. That compares with 9.1% who smoked, about 4.9 million people.

• Daily vaping rose to 6.7% in 2024 from 5.9% in 2023, while occasional vaping fell to 3.3%.
• Young people vape most: 13.0% of 16 to 24 year olds vaped in 2024, down from 15.8% in 2023.
• Dual use is common: 32.8% of current smokers also used an e-cigarette, as did 20.8% of ex-smokers.
• Few never-smokers vape daily: 1.3% of people who had never smoked used an e-cigarette daily, about 450,000 people.

Rules on vapes are changing quickly. Our explainer on the UK disposable vape ban covers what is now illegal to sell and what that means if you use a vape to stay off cigarettes.

ASH UK explains how these smoking figures are collected and used in this short video from its official channel.

How Many UK Smokers Quit Each Year

There is no single official count of everyone who quits in the UK, because most people stop without any formal service. Two data series still give a clear picture: how many ever-smokers have now stopped, and how many people quit with NHS help.

Three in four people who smoked have stopped

The ONS OPN found that 74.2% of people in Great Britain who had ever smoked regularly had quit by 2024, up from 70.9% in 2023. In England, the APS shows that 26.0% of all adults were ex-smokers in 2024, far more than the 10.4% who still smoked. Of the people who were still smoking in 2024, 56.2% said they intended to quit, and 24.4% planned to quit within three months.

NHS stop smoking services in England

The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities publishes yearly service results in its Local Tobacco Control Profiles. These count people who set a quit date with a local service and people who reported being smoke-free four weeks later.

Both 2024/25 counts were higher than in any other year shown here, including 2019/20, the last year before the pandemic. Keep in mind that a four-week quit is an early milestone, not a permanent one, and that these counts are self-reported rather than confirmed with a carbon monoxide test.

If you are comparing support options, our iQuit vs the NHS Quit Smoking app comparison looks at what each offers UK users. iQuit’s dashboard can track money saved in pounds and shows a health-recovery timeline, which some people use alongside a local service rather than instead of one.

Deaths and Costs Attributed to Smoking

Deaths from smoking are estimated, not counted from death certificates, so different publishers give different totals. Two official estimates for England are shown below with their years.

The two death estimates use different methods and years, so the fall from 74,600 to about 61,400 a year should not be read as a like-for-like trend. For the global and US equivalents, see our data on deaths from smoking each year.

ASH’s February 2026 fact sheet also cites Global Burden of Disease 2023 data showing tobacco causes 12.4% of all deaths in the UK. That is more than high body mass index (7.1%) and alcohol (3.2%) combined.

On money, ASH estimates that smoking costs England £44.8 billion a year. That is a whole-society estimate from its 2026 Ready Reckoner, covering lost productivity, health care and social care, not an NHS-only budget line. ASH compares it with about £7.5 billion a year raised from tobacco duty, excluding VAT.

Is the UK on Track for Smokefree 2030?

The UK government’s target is a smokefree England by 2030, defined as adult smoking prevalence of 5% or lower. The ONS says the APS is the official measure for tracking it.

The arithmetic shows the size of the task. England was at 10.4% in 2024, so prevalence would need to roughly halve in six years. Between 2023 and 2024, the UK rate fell by half a percentage point. A drop of that size every year would not reach 5% by 2030. We have not found an official projection of the year England would reach the target, so we do not publish one here.

New policy is designed to speed things up. ASH reports that the government is legislating to raise the age of sale for tobacco gradually from 2027, so that people born in or after 2009 can never legally be sold tobacco. Our guide to the generational smoking ban explains how the rolling age limit will work. The ban mainly stops people starting, though. Hitting 5% by 2030 also depends on today’s 5.3 million adult smokers quitting.

Methodology and Sources

Every figure in this article comes from a page we opened on 15 September 2026. Here is what each source measures.

• ONS Annual Population Survey (APS): adults 18+ across the UK. It asks whether you have ever smoked cigarettes regularly and whether you smoke nowadays, so it can miss some occasional smokers. The ONS says 2020 to 2023 estimates were re-weighted in the 2024 release and replace earlier published figures.
• ONS Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN): people 16+ in Great Britain. It counts anyone who smokes even occasionally, and it is the source for vaping and quitting figures. The ONS warns against comparing APS and OPN results directly.
• OHID Local Tobacco Control Profiles: England-only indicators for deaths, hospital admissions and stop smoking services, taken from the Fingertips data service.
• ASH Smoking Facts at a Glance (February 2026): a secondary summary. We used it for figures whose primary publisher page was not reachable, and we name the original source each time.

The latest data year for UK prevalence is 2024. When the ONS publishes 2025 figures, the numbers in this article will change.

UK Smoking Statistics FAQ