Smoking in Young People in England in 2008:

Selected statistics from the Information Centre’s annual report

Fewer are Smoking• Increasing numbers of young people say they

have never smoked– At the start of the decade 55% said they had never

smoked, that had risen to 68% last year– Boys (69%) are more likely never to have smoked than

girls (67%)• Fewer young people are regular smokers– At the start of the decade 10% were smoking at least

once a week, this had fallen to 6% in 2008– Girls (8%) are more likely to be regular smokers than

boys (5%)

Never Smoked by Year and Sex

Regular Smokers by Year and Sex

The proportion of non-smokers falls with age

Family Attitudes

• Parents and carers are perceived by young people to be actively hostile to smoking.

• As young people grow up they increasingly expect their parents to reason with them.

• Living with smokers makes it less likely young people perceive their families would disapprove of them smoking.

• Regular smokers (36%) were less likely to be secret smokers than those that smoke occasionally (65%).

Family attitudes to smoking by year

Family attitude to smoking by age

Family attitude towards smoking, by number of smokers pupil lives with

Pupils are finding it increasingly difficult to buy cigarettes from shops

Pupils are increasingly being refused cigarettes by shops

Attitudes

• Young people decreasingly see smoking as acceptable

• Regular smokers are more likely to over-estimate rates of smoking amongst their peers.

Pupils are increasingly intolerant of smoking

All at it?

Information about smoking

• Recall of lessons about smoking has remained stable in recent years.

• Parents (72%) and teachers (69%) are seen as the most important sources of helpful information about smoking.

• TV is seen as an important source of information about smoking by 75%.– Girls (64%) are more likely than boys to see

newspapers and magazines as important than boys (51%)

Remembered lessons on smoking

Sources of helpfulinformation about smoking, by sex

Sources of helpfulinformation about smoking, by sex

Risk factors

• Young people who have used drugs in the last year are 10 times as likely to be regular smokers

• Young people living with a smoker in the household were twice as likely to be regular smokers themselves, and this increases where there are additional smokers in the household

• Young people who have been excluded or who have truanted are more that twice as likely to be regular smokers.

Estimated odds ratios for regular smoking, by individual and school-level measures

• Smoking drinking and drug use among young people in England in 2008 can be downloaded from the Information Centre’s website at:www.ic.nhs.uk