Have there been sustained impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on trends in smoking prevalence, uptake, quitting, use of treatment, and relapse? A monthly population study in England, 2017–2022

Table 1 Descriptive statistics

	Overall	Before pandemic (June 2017–Feb 2020)	During pandemic (April 2020–Aug 2022)	p*
Unweighted N	101,960	55,349	46,611
Age (years)	48.3 (18.7)	47.8 (18.9)	48.7 (18.6)	< 0.001
18–24	12.1%	12.8%	11.3%	-
25–44	33.2%	33.1%	33.3%	-
45–65	33.2%	33.0%	33.5%	-
> 65	21.5%	21.1%	21.9%	-
Gender				< 0.001
Men	48.9%	49.0%	48.7%	-
Women	50.8%	50.9%	50.7%	-
In another way	0.3%	0.1%	0.6%	-
Social grade C2DE (less advantaged)	44.2%	44.4%	43.9%	0.178
Region in England				0.889
London	15.5%	15.5%	15.5%	-
South	26.5%	26.4%	26.5%	-
Central	30.2%	30.2%	30.3%	-
North	27.8%	27.9%	27.7%	-
Current smoker
All adults	16.8%	17.0%	16.6%	0.147
Young adults¹	22.7%	21.7%	24.0%	0.006
Middle-aged adults²	15.2%	16.5%	13.5%	< 0.001
Past-year smoker	18.5%	18.1%	19.0%	0.001
Cigarette dependence^3a	1.69 (1.19)	1.74 (1.13)	1.62 (1.26)	< 0.001
Quit in past year (cessation)³	9.2%	6.2%	12.6%	< 0.001
Tried to quit in past year (≥ 1 past-year quit attempt)³	33.9%	30.7%	37.5%	< 0.001
Number of past-year quit attempts^4b	1.43 (1.79)	1.40 (1.77)	1.46 (1.79)	0.002
Use of cessation support⁴
Prescription medication	7.1%	6.8%	7.4%	0.400
Behavioural support	7.4%	6.1%	8.7%	< 0.001
E-cigarettes	31.3%	32.7%	29.8%	0.029
Monthly inflation-adjusted national tobacco control expenditure (£)^c	137,000 (247,000)	142,000 (237,000)	131,000 (261,000)	0.862

Data are shown as percentages or mean (SD), unless otherwise specified
There was a small amount of missing data for some variables (< 0.1% gender, 2.4% cigarette dependence, 4.1% tried to quit in the past year); valid percentages are shown
C2DE small employers/lower supervisory/technical/semi-routine/routine/never workers/long-term unemployed
^aStrength of urges to smoke rated on a scale from 0 (none) to 5 (extremely strong)
^bGeometric mean
^cPopulation-level variable, unweighted
¹Among 18–24-year-olds (unweighted n = 12,455)
²Among 45–65-year-olds (unweighted n = 34,332)
³Among past-year smokers (unweighted n = 17,964)
⁴Among past-year smokers who tried to quit in the past year (unweighted n = 5754)
^*P value for the difference between samples recruited before vs. during pandemic. Chi-square tests for categorical variables and t-tests for continuous variables

ISSN: 1741-7015