Trends in cross-border and illicit tobacco purchasing prevalence among adults in England who had smoked in the past year
| Prevalence (95% CI) | Prevalence ratio February 2019 to October 2022 (95% CI) | ||
| February 2019* | October 2022* | ||
| Purchased cross-border tobacco in the past 6 months | |||
| All adults who smoked in the past year | 5.2% (3.9 to 7.0) | 16.1% (12.2 to 21.3) | 3.10 (2.03 to 4.73) |
| ABC1 (more advantaged) | 6.6% (4.6 to 9.5) | 23.3% (17.0 to 31.9) | 3.52 (2.05 to 5.91) |
| C2DE (less advantaged) | 4.4% (2.8 to 7.0) | 11.5% (7.1 to 18.6) | 2.61 (1.17 to 5.20) |
| Purchased illicit tobacco in the past 6 months | |||
| All adults who smoked in the past year | 9.2% (7.7 to 11.0) | 8.5% (6.6 to 11.0) | 0.92 (0.70 to 1.21) |
| ABC1 (more advantaged) | 6.8% (5.1 to 9.1) | 6.8% (4.9 to 9.6) | 1.01 (0.69 to 1.44) |
| C2DE (less advantaged) | 10.6% (8.4 to 13.4) | 9.9% (7.0 to 14.0) | 0.93 (0.65 to 1.31) |
ABC1 includes managerial, professional and upper supervisory occupations. C2DE includes manual routine, semiroutine, lower supervisory and long-term unemployed.
*Weighted prevalence from logistic regression on all adults who smoked in the past year and allowing an interaction between social grade and month (estimates for respondents from social grades ABC1 and C2DE), modelled non-linearly using restricted cubic splines (four knots for cross-border tobacco and three knots for illicit tobacco; see online supplemental material for details of model selection).