The prevalence of cigarette smoking fell substantially in the 1970s and the early 1980s – from 45% in 1974 to 35% in 1982. After 1982, the rate of decline slowed with prevalence falling by only about one percentage point every two years until 1996 when, for the first time, there was an increase and 28% of all adults aged 16 and over were estimated to be cigarette smokers. Prevalence fell back to 27% in 1998 (unweighted data). In 2000, 27% of adults were smokers, a fall of one percentage point compared to the weighted figure for 1998. This decline is not statistically significant but the fall in two consecutive surveys confirms that the rise in prevalence in 1996 was not indicative of a new upward trend.

In the 1970s, men were much more likely than women to be smokers - in 1974, for example, 51% of men, compared with 41% of women, smoked cigarettes. Since then, the difference in smoking prevalence between men and women has reduced, although it has not disappeared completely. In 2000, 29% of men and 25% of women were cigarette smokers.

The reduction in prevalence among men is due more to an increase in the proportion who have never smoked than to a rise in the proportion of ex-smokers, whereas the reverse is true for women. Over the period 1974 to 2000, the proportion of men who had never smoked rose sharply from 25% to 44% while the proportion of ex-smokers rose much less steeply from 23% to 27%. In contrast, over the same period, the proportion of women who had never smoked increased by only five percentage points, from 49% to 54%, whereas the proportion who said that they had given up smoking almost doubled from 11% to 20%.

Throughout the 1990s, the prevalence of cigarette smoking was highest among those aged 20 to 24. Between 1998 and 2000, however, prevalence fell in this age group from 40% to 35%, the same level as among 25 to 34 year olds.

The GHS has consistently shown that cigarette smoking is considerably more prevalent among those in manual groups than among those in non-manual groups. In the 1970s and 1980s, the prevalence of cigarette smoking fell more sharply among those in non-manual than in manual groups. In the 1990s there was little further change in the relative proportions smoking cigarettes until 1998 to 2000, when there was a fall of two percentage points in the prevalence of smoking among both men and women in manual socio-economic groups.

See Chapter 8