The cigarette’s days are numbered, and the last fag to be smoked in England will be puffed in Derby in 2050, researchers have predicted.
If current quitting trends continue, today’s 7.4 million smokers will dwindle to zero in 30 years, market analysts Frontier Economics found.
But the rate at which smokers quit their filthy habit, which kills 200 people a day, varies in different areas.
Bristol is set to be the first city to quit, having no smokers by 2024, followed by York and Wokingham, Berks, in 2026.
Yorkshire’s East Riding local authority area, Blackburn and Darwen in Lancashire, Portsmouth and Reading will be next in 2027, and Buckinghamshire, Bournemouth and Milton Keynes in 2028. Southampton will not quit its habit until 2049.
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The predictions, commissioned by tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris, were based on income, employment, health and education data.
Increased use of NHS cessation services and the popularity of e-cigs and heated tobacco account for the decline in smoking. But Public Health England warned: “Regular e-cigarette use is plateauing. There is an opportunity to further reduce the harms caused by tobacco by encouraging more smokers to try vaping.”
Mark MacGregor, of Philip Morris, said: “There are more alternative options than ever to help people give up cigarettes for good.”
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The company wants to stop producing cigarettes altogether by selling smoke-free products instead.
One in five people in deprived areas still smoke. An average of 22% of people in Kingston upon Hull, Blackpool and North Lincolnshire still smoke.
In 1990, almost 33% of UK adults smoked, but the percentage has more than halved to 15% since then.
