• There was no change in the overall prevalence of cigarette smoking in Great Britain between 2000 and 2001: it remained at 27% of those aged 16 and over.

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 1990, since when it has levelled out. It should be noted that even during periods when the prevalence of smoking in the general population is not changing, upward and downward movements in survey estimates are to be expected, because of sampling fluctuations. Thus although there was no overall change between 2000 and 2001, prevalence rose by one percentage point among women and fell by the same amount among men: neither of these changes is statistically significant.

• In 2001, 28% of men and 26% of women were cigarette smokers.

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.

This change results mainly from a combination of two factors.

• First, there is a cohort effect resulting from the fact that smoking became common among men several decades earlier than it did among women, so that in the 1970s there was a fall in the proportion of women aged 60 and over who had never smoked regularly.
• Second, men are more likely than women to have given up smoking cigarettes. It should be noted, however, that this difference conceals the fact that a proportion of men who give up smoking cigarettes remain smokers, since they continue to smoke cigars and pipes; this is much less common among women who stop smoking cigarettes.

The effect of weighting on the 1998 and 2000 data suggested that the difference in prevalence between men and women may have been slightly underestimated by the unweighted data shown in previous reports, but this is less clear from the 2001 data.

Smoking among different age groups is another key area of interest. Since the early 1990s, the prevalence of cigarette smoking has been higher among those aged 20 to 24 than among those in other age groups: up to the early twenties, more young people are starting to smoke than are giving up (almost one in five of those who smoke at some time in their lives take up the habit after the age of 20).

Since the survey began, there has been considerable fluctuation in prevalence rates among those aged 16 to 19, but this is mainly because of the small sample size in this age group. Thus, although the prevalence of cigarette smoking fell from 30% in 2000 to 25% in 2001 among young men aged 16 to 19, and rose from 28% to 31% among young women of the same age, neither these changes nor the difference in 2001 between men and women in this age group are statistically significant.

Prevalence continues to be lowest, at 17% in 2001, among people aged 60 and over, who are less likely than younger people to have ever been smokers, and also more likely to have given up.