Health secretary’s claims on smoking aren’t supported by the evidence

“Today, across the UK, 350 young people aged 25 and under will take up smoking. It is a decision that the vast majority will later regret. They will try to quit again and again, but most will not be able to break their addiction.”

The health secretary Wes Streeting recently said that most young smokers will never be able to break their addiction, and also suggested that smoking “will eventually kill” two-in-three of them. He made the comments during a debate in parliament on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, but neither claim is supported by the evidence.

Ministers should correct false or misleading claims made in Parliament as soon as possible in keeping with the Ministerial Code which states that they should correct “any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity”.

How successful are most attempts to quit smoking?

When Full Fact asked the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to provide a source for Mr Streeting’s claim that “most will not be able to break their addiction”, it pointed to data showing an estimated 27.5% success rate for stopping among those who tried to quit in 2024. This was based on a monthly survey conducted by pollsters Ipsos Mori of around 1,700-1,800 adults aged 16 and over in England.

But this does not mean smokers who failed will never be able to quit. It simply means they did not quit successfully at that point. The same survey data shows around 37.6% of those polled tried to stop smoking in 2024.

The DHSC also pointed us towards data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which shows in 2023 31.7% of smokers wanted to quit (without a specified timeframe) and 23.2% wanted to quit in the next three months.

In fact, the data would suggest the majority of people do successfully quit. According to the ONS, three-quarters (71%) of over-16s who have ever been regular smokers weren’t currently smoking in 2023. This proportion has more than doubled since the 1970s.

Do two-thirds of young smokers die from smoking?

The DHSC also told us that Mr Streeting’s claim that “two-in-three” young people will be “eventually” killed by their smoking habit was based on a study published in 2015. In an email to Full Fact DHSC described the study’s findings as showing that “smoking kills up to two-thirds of its long-term users”. But that’s not actually what the study found.

Looking at around 5,600 deaths in Australia of those aged 45 and over between 2006 and 2012 it found that “up to two-thirds of deaths in current smokers can be attributed to smoking”.

This means that two-thirds of everyone who was still a smoker when they died, likely died because of the habit. It doesn’t mean that two-thirds of all people who ever smoke will be killed by it.

The latest data for England shows that 15% of all deaths in 2019 were attributable to smoking and 32% of deaths were from conditions that can be caused by smoking.

Full Fact is tracking the government’s progress on its pledge to ensure “the next generation can never legally buy cigarettes”.