Smoking drops significantly in England each year

People in England are smoking approximately 1.4 billion fewer cigarettes every year, thanks to stricter tobacco laws and actions to encourage people to quit smoking, according to a study released on Thursday by the University College London (UCL).

The UCL-led study analyzed cigarette sales data for England and compared this with the monthly self-reported cigarette use of over 135,000 individuals from another research project. Currently 16 percent of adults in England smoke cigarettes.

Between 2011 and 2018, average monthly cigarette consumption fell by nearly a quarter, equating to around 118 million fewer cigarettes being smoked every month, the study showed.

The decline in cigarette consumption has been "dramatic and exceeded the decline in smoking prevalence, which, over the same time period, was around 15 percent," said the study's lead author, Dr Sarah Jackson from UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.

"This means that not only are fewer people smoking, but those who continue to smoke are smoking less," noted Dr Jackson.

The study has been published in the journal JAMA Network Open.