Attacking e-cigarettes does not aid efforts to reduce levels of smoking in the UK. Prioritising such a policy focus ahead of more effective means such as education programmes simply serves to put more lives at risk, writes Alice Calder.
Cigarettes have undoubtedly lost their lustre in the UK. Once a mainstay in the hand of any aspirational figure, smokes are declining in popularity.
Currently only about 14 per cent of the adult population indulge. Fifty years ago, it was closer to 50 per cent. Numbers continue to go down year by year. Between 2018 and 2019 the population of smokers in the UK as a proportion of the adult population fell by four per cent.
However, the uneven distribution of smoking across the UK paints a more complex picture. While the proportion of smokers in affluent areas is as low as 6 per cent, in less wealthy locations smoking rates are much higher, just shy of 22 per cent. These also tend to be areas where higher proportions of people are unemployed and have attained less education, two factors also closely linked to smoking.
These facts suggest that propensity to smoke is rooted in culture and circumstance, not just down to the whims of an individual. Efforts to reduce smoking for such people must focus on the root causes rather than blanket approaches that might do them more harm than good.
Alice Calder – Comment Central – 2021-10-11.
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