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Almost A Quarter of Scots Still Smoking

Published: 2010-08-27    Views:74 reads

 

Brief: The government's target of reducing smoking in Scotland to 22 per cent of the adult population by the end of this year is going to be missed, according to a story by Carolyn Churchill and Sarah Smith for the Herald Scotland.

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The government's target of reducing smoking in Scotland to 22 per cent of the adult population by the end of this year is going to be missed, according to a story by Carolyn Churchill and Sarah Smith for the Herald Scotland.

A recent Scottish Household Survey recorded 24.3 per cent of adults as saying they smoked in 2009, down from 30.7 per cent in 1999.

Projecting these figures to the end of this year would indicate a smoking rate of about 23.5 per cent.

Forty per cent of adults living in the most deprived areas of Scotland currently smoke, and those most likely to smoke regularly are people who are unable to work because of short-term ill health, those who are unemployed or those who are disabled.

Men are more likely than women to smoke in every age group apart from the 60-74 years group.

And men on average smoke three more cigarettes a day than do women.

According to the Herald account, the household survey said that while Scotland's public-places smoking ban may have encouraged some people to give up smoking, there had been 'no change in the overall trend since the introduction of the ban', which presumably means that without the ban smoking would have increased, despite the other anti-tobacco initiatives in place.