If these components mix, when you begin smoking, it’s that rather more tough to interrupt freed from the poverty line. Again in 2009, only a decade in the past, the common value of a 20 pack of premium cigarettes was simply £5.45. By late 2024, this had risen to round £16.35, growing additional to round £16.60 in early 2025 (32).
A pack-a-day smoking behavior now prices round £6,000 per 12 months (32).
If cigarette costs had risen in step with basic inflation, a 20 pack would value round £10.71 as we speak (6).
Median weekly earnings rose from £488.50 in 2009 to £569 in 2018 (7). Extra just lately, median weekly earnings reached £728 in 2024 and £766.60 in 2025 (37).
A pack-a-day smoker now spends round £115 per week, equating to round 15% of median gross weekly earnings, and a considerably increased proportion for households beneath the median (32, 37).
In response to ASH, round 1.5 million smoking households are pushed beneath the poverty line as soon as tobacco expenditure is included (31).
