About 12 million adults smoke
cigarettes: 28% of men and 26% of women.
Smoking is heaviest in Scotland
where 31% of the population smokes.
Around 450 children start smoking
every day.
One fifth of fifteen year olds
smoke – including a quarter of fifteen year old girls.
Among 15 to 24 year olds the UK
has some of the highest smoking rates in Europe.
Smoking is most common in young
adults. 40% of 20 to 24 year olds smoke.
Smoking kills over 120,000 people
every year.
Most die from cancer, chronic
obstructive lung disease (bronchitis and emphysema) and coronary
heart disease.
Around a half of all regular
smokers will be killed by their habit.
Smoking causes at least 80% of
all deaths from lung cancer, around 80% of all deaths from
bronchitis and emphysema and around 17% of all deaths from heart
disease.
Smoking is responsible for a
third of all cancer deaths.
The UK government earned £9,510
million in revenue from tobacco duty and VAT in the financial
year 2000-01.
The Government currently spends
around £17m on anti-smoking education campaigns. A further £20m
is spent on measures to help people stop smoking.
21% of women and 27% of men are
ex-smokers.
Young People and
Smoking
In the UK:
8% of children have tried smoking
by the age of 10.
By the age of 11, one third of
children, and by 16, two thirds of children, have experimented
with smoking.
One in five teenagers are current
smokers.
49% have tried smoking.
Children are three times as
likely to smoke if both of their parents smoke. Friends and
siblings also have a key influence.
Smoking rates were stable in the
early nineties, rose in the mid-nineties and stabilised in the
late nineties at around the current figures.
More men than women smoke, but
significantly more teenage girls than teenage boys smoke.
More than 80% of adult smokers
started smoking as teenagers.
Teenage smokers are two to six
times more susceptible to coughs and increased phlegm,
wheeziness and shortness of breath than non-smokers.
Teenage smokers are 3 times more
likely to have time off school.
Smoking during childhood or the
teenage years causes permanent genetic change in the lungs and
increases the risk of lung cancer significantly and
irreversibly.
Someone who starts smoking at 15
is three times more likely to die from lung cancer than someone
who starts in their mid-20s.
Women in their mid-thirties are
now developing fatal lung cancer as a result of starting to
smoke in their early teens.
Professor Ray Donnelly, founder
and president of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation says:
“This
is a logical consequence of girls starting to smoke at a much
younger age. If we have girls starting to smoke at the age of 10
to 12 it is not surprising that they develop lung cancer by
their 40s.’
Genetic damage also leads to
increased risk of heart disease.
Addiction strikes fast. Teenagers
and adults have similar levels of nicotine dependence.
Tobacco products can be sold
legally to those aged 16 and over.
The majority of 11to 15 year olds
who try to buy cigarettes are NOT refused, however.
The penalties are lax. Almost 90%
of retailers successfully prosecuted are fined less than £350.
83% of teenage smokers want to
stop.
Women who start smoking within five years of starting their
periods are around 70% more likely to develop breast cancer
later in life than non-smokers. 1 in 9 women develop breast
cancer.
