North Lanarkshire has highest percentage of smokers in Scotland

You will find more smokers in North Lanarkshire than anywhere else in Scotland, according to new data by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Latest figures show that 20.8% of adults in the region confess to smoking cigarettes regularly - making it the third highest concentration of smokers in the UK.

Fenland, in Cambridgeshire, was placed first with 22.1% and Blackpool came in second with 21.3%.

East Dunbartonshire has the lowest proportion of smokers in Scotland, with just 6.6% of adults regularly smoking.

All the figures are five-year averages covering the period 2019-23.

It comes as the Labour government weighs up introducing an outdoor smoking ban in a bid to help reduce the 80,000 smoking-related deaths in the UK every year.

Sheila Duffy, CEO of ASH Scotland said: "These ONS figures really reinforce that communities in Scotland facing the greatest deprivation, where people are living on low incomes and in stressful life circumstances are continuing to report the highest smoking rates.

"We know that tobacco can be really addictive, can be hard to quit and is very much prevalent in some communities so that children grow up and perceive this as a normal adult thing to get involved in doing.

"We need the Government to act and ASH Scotland calls on the Scottish Government to maintain the funding for stop smoking services throughout Scotland because these services increase people's chances of quitting successfully."

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