Cigarette smoking among adults
Published
1. Main facts and figures
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12.7% of adults in England were cigarette smokers in 2022
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17.0% of adults in the mixed ethnic groups were smokers – higher than the national average
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the percentage of adults who smoked was lower than average in the Chinese (8.4%), Asian (7.4%) and black (4.7%) ethnic groups
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from 2011 to 2022, the percentage of adults who smoked went down in all ethnic groups
2. Things you need to know
What the data measures
The data measures the percentage of adults (aged 18 and above) in England who said they were cigarette smokers at the time they were surveyed, by ethnicity.
Percentages have been rounded to 1 decimal place.
The ethnic groups used in the data
Data is shown for the following aggregated ethnic groups:
- Asian
- black
- Chinese
- mixed
- white
- ‘other’
This is because the number of people surveyed was too small to make any reliable generalisations about any of the 18 ethnic groups.
There is a separate category for people whose ethnicity was not known.
Methodology
Read the detailed methodology document for the data on this page.
It is unlikely that everyone who was a smoker when they were surveyed responded accurately. This may be due to the social stigma some people attach to smoking. As a result, the findings are likely to underestimate the true percentage of people who were smokers.
The data is based on survey data. Find out more about:
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interpreting survey data, including how reliability is affected by the number of people surveyed
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how weighting is used to make survey data more representative of the whole population
In the data file
Download the data for:
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unrounded figures
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figures for all ethnic groups combined, including people whose ethnicity was not known
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confidence intervals for each ethnic group – find out more about how we use confidence intervals to determine how reliable estimates are
3. By ethnicity over time
| Ethnicity | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| % | % | % | % | % | % | % | % | % | % | % | % | |
| All | 19.8 | 19.3 | 18.4 | 17.8 | 16.9 | 15.5 | 14.9 | 14.4 | 13.9 | 13.8 | 13.0 | 12.7 |
| Asian | 11.7 | 10.8 | 10.8 | 10.8 | 10.0 | 9.4 | 9.3 | 9.1 | 8.3 | 8.2 | 7.7 | 7.4 |
| Black | 13.2 | 13.0 | 12.0 | 13.5 | 11.3 | 10.3 | 10.4 | 11.0 | 9.7 | 9.7 | 8.1 | 4.7 |
| Chinese | 13.5 | 11.5 | 10.0 | 10.9 | 12.2 | 7.4 | 8.6 | 7.7 | 6.7 | 4.6 | 5.1 | 8.4 |
| Mixed | 26.3 | 24.9 | 25.5 | 24.4 | 22.4 | 20.8 | 20.5 | 20.4 | 19.5 | 18.9 | 16.0 | 17.0 |
| White | 20.6 | 20.1 | 19.2 | 18.5 | 17.6 | 16.2 | 15.4 | 15.0 | 14.4 | 14.3 | 13.7 | 13.2 |
| Other | 19.7 | 18.3 | 16.3 | 16.8 | 16.7 | 14.6 | 16.5 | 15.5 | 15.6 | 15.5 | 10.6 | 13.6 |
| Unknown | 18.3 | 23.5 | 16.0 | 15.3 | 19.0 | 13.0 | 9.5 | 5.8 | 8.9 | 19.9 | 20.9 | 12.5 |
Download table data for ‘By ethnicity over time’ (CSV) Source data for ‘By ethnicity over time’ (CSV)
4. Data sources
Source
Type of data
Survey data
Type of statistic
National Statistics
Publisher
Office for National Statistics
Note on corrections or updates
Higher-level figures may differ from those published by the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office for National Statistics that use the Labour Force Survey.
Publication frequency
Yearly
Purpose of data source
The Annual Population Survey (APS) is the largest ongoing household survey in the UK and covers a range of topics, including:
- personal characteristics
- labour market status
- work characteristics
- education
- health
The purpose of the APS is to provide information on important social and socio-economic variables at local levels, such as labour market estimates.
The published statistics also allow the government to monitor estimates on a range of issues between censuses.
5. Download the data
This file contains the following: measure, ethnicity, year, geography, gender, age, value, numerator, confidence intervals (upper bound, lower bound)