A poll taken by Action on Smoking and Health has shown that up to 1 million people have quit smoking since the start of lockdown.
It’s good to see so many quitters!
These figures are just in the UK too, so it’s a significant number of people.
They revealed that 7.6% of the 10,000 people surveyed admitted they’d stopped smoking between april and june, and more than 40 percent of respondents said they’d stopped as a result of the pandemic, and it seemed to be the younger smokers that have decided to kick the habit, as oppose to the older smokers. More specifically, 17% of people aged between 17 and 29 years old have stopped smoking during the ongoing pandemic. This isn’t to say over 50s and older smokers haven’t stopped too though – the numbers suggest plenty of people aged 50 and over kicked the habit too.
Smoking can seriously affect you in nasty ways, but it’s also been shown to increase the chance of severe coronavirus illness. This is bound to have played a huge part of why people quit, alongside using all their spare time to try better themselves in any way they can.
Hazel Cheeseman, the directory of policy at ASH, said: “We don’t know for sure why so many people are giving up smoking. But we feel the threat of coronavirus has motivated people to do things to improve their health.”
And yes, I’m aware that only 10,251 people were surveyed by YouGov, but these numbers were then extrapolated out using estimates from the Office for National Statistics, to get to the 1 million number.
