High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Smoking
Smoking remains one of biggest contributory factors to Scotland's poor health record. In 2004, it was estimated that 13,473 deaths were attributed to smoking, equating to 24% of all deaths in Scotland. 1
Smoking among adults has gradually declined from a level of 30.7% in 1999 to 24.2% in 2010. From 2007 to 2009 there was a fairly steady decrease from 25.7% to 24.3%, which levelled off in 2010 (24.2%).
While there has been a decrease of 6.5 percentage points since 1999 the National Performance Framework target of reducing smoking rates among adults to 22% by 2010 has not been met.
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Source: Scottish Household Survey
Smoking is also highly correlated with deprivation, and smoking prevalence in deprived areas is consistently higher than the Scottish average. Although smoking prevalence in deprived areas has decreased in recent years, it has fallen more slowly than for Scotland as a whole. In 2000, 45.2% of adults were smokers in the 15% most deprived areas compared to 29.3% of adults in Scotland overall. In 2009, 41.0% of adults were smokers in the most deprived areas compared to 24.3% of adults in Scotland overall.
There was a further national target to reduce smoking during pregnancy, which seeks a reduction in the proportion of women who smoke during pregnancy from 29% to 23% between 1995 and 2005 and to 20% by 2010. The proportion of women smoking during pregnancy in 2008/2009 was 18.1% (provisional).
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Sources: Scottish Household Survey, NHS Information Services Division (ISD Scotland) SMR02.
Note: Data for pregnant women are based on financial years rather than calendar years, e.g. the figure plotted against 2009 relates to 2008/2009 and smoking during pregnancy data for 2009 is provisional.
1. An Atlas of Tobacco Smoking in Scotland, NHS Health Scotland, ISD Scotland and ASH Scotland