Record numbers of people are ditching cigarettes, the highest rate since the smoking ban 13 years ago.
More than 643,000 smokers in England quit in the 12 months to August, compared with 307,000 in 2019, according to the UCL Smoking Toolkit Study, a monthly household survey.
“The figures are phenomenal,” said Hazel Cheeseman, director of policy at Action on Smoking and Health (Ash). “This is a substantial increase, which seems likely to be driven by the pandemic.”
The proportion of smokers stopping in the past year has jumped to 8.5%, almost twice the rate of 4.3% in 2019, and higher than the 6.7% rate in 2007, the year the smoking ban in enclosed public places began.
Nearly one in four of those trying to quit
