Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD): smoking data

This section presents some data on long term trends in smoking in Scotland, which are particularly relevant to COPD. More recent and more detailed information on smoking is available in the tobacco use section of this site. The graphs on this page are taken from the report Tobacco smoking in Scotland: an epidemiology briefing which can be downloaded from the publications section of this site.

Long term UK smoking trends

Chart 1 shows the trends in the smoking of manufactured cigarettes in Great Britain over the past six decades, based on data from the Tobacco Advisory Council (1948-1970) and from the General Household Survey (1972-2007). In 1948 65% of men and 41% of women in Great Britain smoked manufactured cigarettes. Whilst female smoking rates were relatively stable, male smoking fell gradually until the late 1970s, at which time smoking rates fell rapidly in both genders for approximately two decades with male rates falling faster and thus approaching the lower female rate. From the mid-90s there has been a slower decline in male and female smoking rates than was observed in the 1970s and ‘80s. The final data points from this series show that in 2007 22% of men and 20% of women in Great Britain smoked cigarettes.

Long term Scottish smoking trends

Although the sample size is relatively small in Scotland (around 1700 adults) the UK General Household Survey (GHS) is the best source of data on long term trends in smoking in Scotland. Figures from this survey are shown in Chart 2
 Close . Because of the small sample size the GHS is not used for monitoring current trends in smoking in Scotland. Like other surveys, response rates for the GHS have fallen over the period shown in this graph. This, together with the small sample size, means that these data should be interpreted with caution, but they demonstrate similar trends to those seen in UK-wide data.

More information on smoking trends can be found in the ScotPHO Profiles Tool.