Smokers in the NHS Forth Valley area spend £91 million a year on cigarettes, according to new official UK figures from vaping retailer Ecigone. That works out at £365 for every adult living there, which is 18 per cent above the UK figure of £309.
There are an estimated 26,000 smokers across Forth Valley. The figures were calculated after the price rise on October 1, using smoking rates for every council area in the UK published by the Office for National Statistics on October 6.
Spending by council area
Clackmannanshire is among the 10 areas of the UK where smokers spend the most for the size of the area. The breakdown for each council area in Forth Valley is:
- Clackmannanshire: £21.3 million a year, £507 for every adult
- Falkirk: £50 million a year, £384 for every adult
- Stirling: £19.8 million a year, £255 for every adult
The only other Scottish locations to place in the top 20 were West Lothian (eighth with 19.5 per cent) and Glasgow (ninth with 19.1 per cent).
How the figures were calculated
Ecigone used the smoking rate for every council area in the UK to share the UK's 4.9 million smokers between 359 council areas. Each smoker was then costed at the ONS average of 10 cigarettes a day and an average price of about £19.18 for a pack of 20 since tobacco duty rose on October 1. That comes to about £3,500 a year for each smoker.
Across the UK the bill adds up to about £17.2 billion a year, or £309 for every adult. In St Albans, the lowest of the areas with a reliable estimate, the figure is £151.
Birmingham has the biggest bill of any single council area. Its estimated 90,900 smokers spend about £318 million a year, ahead of Glasgow on £248 million and Leeds on £216 million. Smokers spend more than £100 million a year in 27 council areas.
Regional and national comparisons
Scotland spends the most of the four nations for its population, at £351 for every adult, followed by Wales on £337, Northern Ireland on £328 and England on £303. Yorkshire and the Humber is the highest-spending English region on £335, and the South East is the lowest on £276.
Shane Margereson, owner of Ecigone, said the new vaping duty had not closed the gap between the cost of smoking and the cost of vaping. He said: "The duty costs a typical vaper around 79p a day, or about £290 a year. That is real money, and it is fair to be annoyed about it. But the tobacco duty on twenty cigarettes a day is many times larger."
Mr Margereson said some smokers move to rolling tobacco to save money. He said: "Rolling your own is cheaper per cigarette than buying packs, which is why plenty of smokers switch to it when money gets tight. It is worth being clear that it is not any safer."
He added: "The NHS is clear that vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking and one of the most effective ways to stop. It is not risk-free, and if you do not smoke you should not start."
The price of a pack went up by about £1.21 on 1 October, according to HM Revenue and Customs, when the yearly tobacco duty rise and a one-off extra increase arrived on the same day as the new duty on vape liquid.
Free help to stop smoking is available from local stop smoking services and through the NHS Quit Smoking app.
