Woman 'saving £13k a year' after stopping smoking
BBCA woman who has stopped smoking says she is saving herself £13,000 a year while looking younger and feeling better.
New data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows the number of smokers in south-west England has dropped to the lowest ever recorded level.
Rosemary Penn, who lives near Bodmin, took up the habit as a young teen and was smoking 40 to 50 cigarettes a day until March when she decided to stop.
The 70-year-old said she had made the decision after seeing a sofa for sale: "I thought, I spent £29.50 a day on cigarettes. How long will I have to stop smoking before I could afford this? And it was just 26 days."
Penn bought the sofa and said she has not smoked since that day.
In addition to the financial benefit of quitting the habit, Penn said: "I look younger... it makes me feel better, I can walk a lot more, I'm a lot fitter - I've got horses and dogs so I have to be fit for them - and I just feel happy."
The ONS data estimates the percentage of smokers in Cornwall was 12.6% in 2019 to 2021 and dropped to 10.7% in 2023 to 2025, which is about 50,000 people.
In Devon the percentage of smokers in 2019 to 2021 was estimated as 11.3% and this has dropped to 10.2% in 2023 to 2025, which is about 70,000 smokers.
Based on these estimates, more than 50,000 fewer people are smoking across both counties.
Benji Hadwell is the lead of Smokefree South West, a programme which works with local authorities and the NHS to help people stop smoking.
He said: "If you wanted to invent a product that killed people in the most efficient way possible, smoking is not a bad way to go about it, it's associated with pretty much every health condition you can think of."
He said there was a variety of different aids to help people suffering nicotine cravings, including patches, gum and vapes, alongside free services provided by Smokefree and others to support people who wanted to quit the habit.
Vape use increase
Devon County Council public health director Steve Brown said while the number of smokers was reducing, vape usage had grown quickly during the past five years but had now levelled off at about one in 10 adults.
He said most people who vaped were currently smoking or used to smoke but there was concern that people who had never smoked, including young people, were using vapes.
"Around one in 14 children aged 11 to 17 vape, and that's too many. Vaping is not for children nor for people who don't smoke," he said.
The new ONS data showed e-cigarette use overtook cigarette smoking for the first time in 2024.
Brown said vapes had only been widely used for about a decade so the long-term picture was unknown.
"Worryingly, more than half of people who smoke wrongly think vaping is as harmful as smoking, and that may be stopping them from switching.
"Vaping isn't risk-free, but for someone who smokes it carries a small fraction of the risk," he added.
