Unless you are a tobacco company, good news came last Tuesday. Public Health England published data revealing that the number of people who smoke in the UK is at its lowest since records began. The figure now stands at only 16.9 per cent, a decrease from the 17.8 per cent figure from 2014. In 1974, a full 45 per cent of people in Britain smoked. Such a decline can be attributed to the fact that the detrimental side-effects of smoking are now much more widely known and understood.
However, such a dramatic decrease is also a testament to the success of aggressive anti-smoking public health campaigns and changes in legislation. Campaigns such as Smoking Kills, and its successor launched in 2015, Smoking Still Kills, have worked in concert with legislative changes like the smoking ban, compulsory warnings on tobacco product packaging and a complete ban on tobacco advertising.
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