Drop in smoking rate "implausible" – ONS

Well, that's weird.

Further to my previous post and the suggestion, courtesy of The Sun, that the long-awaited Office for National Statistics' figures for smoking rates for 2020 would show a small increase, the ONS quietly released their research yesterday morning and tweeted:

Latest data on smoking prevalence in the UK from the Annual Population Survey (APS) show an unrealistic [my emphasis] drop in the proportion of adult cigarette smokers in 2020.

This is likely affected by APS data collection changes resulting from the #COVID pandemic

They also tweeted:

Annual Population Survey data show a sudden and implausible [my emphasis] drop in adult cigarette smokers to 12.3% in April to December 2020.

This period is when the survey became telephone-only. These estimates should be treated with caution

Compare that to The Sun's 'exclusive' that claimed that:

The stress of the pandemic has seen more people take up smoking for the first time in decades, according to ONS stats set to be released this week.

Anyway, it's noticeable that what the ONS last year called 'Adult smoking habits in the UK: 2019' (and before that 2018, 2017 etc) has been changed to 'Smoking prevalence in the UK and the impact of data collection changes: 2020'.

According to the ONS:

In Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2020 before the coronavirus pandemic, when the APS was predominately face to face, 13.8% of people aged 18 years and above in the UK said they smoked cigarettes; this estimate was not statistically significantly different compared with our annual estimate for 2019 (14.1%).

The change in the APS survey mode to telephone-only interviews in Quarters 2 to 4 (Apr to Dec) of 2020 showed an apparent sudden and implausible drop in the proportion of adults who smoked cigarettes to 12.3%; estimates should be interpreted with caution.

How The Sun got it wrong I don't know (someone must have given them the story or perhaps they misinterpreted some figures) but given the qualifications the ONS has attached to the figures it's hard to know what to say.

We (Forest) did draft a press release based on The Sun's prediction of a small increase in the smoking rate but thankfully we didn't send it out, preferring to wait for the publication of the official figures.

And to give them credit, by stating that their estimates are 'unrealistic', 'implausible' and 'should be treated with caution', the ONS can't be accused of being anything other than completely transparent.

What a contrast with ASH whose equally implausible calculation that one million smokers had quit during the first few months of Covid could and should have come with a similar warning.

Needless to say it didn't and as a result it was widely reported.

The ONS stats, on the other hand, have been ignored by pretty much everyone. In fact, I seem to be the only person writing about them!

Update: MailOnline has tried to make sense of the figures here.