Figures published last week show that legal tobacco sales fell by 52% in the United Kingdom between 2021 and 2025. The volume of manufactured cigarettes sold dropped by 46%, from 23.4 billion sticks to 12.6 billion sticks, while the volume of rolling tobacco fell by 59%, from 8.6 million kilograms to 3.6 million kilograms.
The decline in legal rolling tobacco sales is particularly significant because loose tobacco has been subject to the heaviest tax rises in recent years, with the duty rate doubling since 2020. Rolling tobacco is often the last resort for low income smokers before they turn to the black market.
Converting kilograms of rolling tobacco into sticks, we find that a total of 19.8 billion cigarettes were sold legally in the UK in 2025, less than half the figure recorded in 2021 (40.6 billion).1 This decline is far greater than any estimate of the decline in the smoking rate. These estimates vary. According to the Opinion & Lifestyle Survey, the smoking rate among people aged 16 or older in Great Britain fell from 12.7% to 9.1% between 2021 and 2024. According to the Annual Population Survey, the rate among people aged 18 or older in the United Kingdom fell from 12.3% to 10.5% in the same period. Neither survey has an estimate for 2025 yet, but the monthly Smoking Toolkit Study suggests that the rate of daily cigarette smoking in England was 10.6% in 2025, only modestly less than in 2021 when the rate was 11.4%.
If the Smoking Toolkit Study is correct then overall tobacco consumption has barely changed since 2021 and it is a mathematical certainty that at least 50% of the market is illicit. If the other estimates are correct, the illicit share is still much larger than the official estimate of 13% from HMRC.
I may return to the question of why estimates of smoking prevalence are so different and why HMRC's estimate is so wrong in the future. For now, read my analysis of the latest data on the IEA Insider Substack.
