Over 25% of households who smoke in East Anglia living in poverty
That equates to 103,000 according to research from the charity, Action on Smoking and Health
Over a quarter of households who smoke in East Anglia are living in poverty.
That's about 103,000 according to research from the charity, Action on Smoking and Health, which shows that smoking has a greater impact on poor communities.
Hazel Cheeseman, is the deputy chief executive of the group: "The average smoker is spending around £2,000 a year on tobacco. Once you take that into account in the East there are over a 100,000 households which include a smoker and they're made up of over 200,000 adults who are of working age, over 40,000 adults of pensionable age and over 100,000 children".
She told us she's not surprised by the findings: "We have this big gap now between the more affluent and the least affluent people, where smoking rates are much, much higher.
"The reason for that is that it's much more difficult to quit if you're a disadvantaged smoker, you tend to be more addicted to smoking, which means you smoke more and more often, so it's much harder to stop. But in addition to this, all the people around you are smoking".
She says the Government needs to think of creative ways to tackle the issue and hit their targets: "We should be looking at things like raising the age of sale from 18 to 21. We should be looking at new ways to communicate the harms from smoking through pack inserts, through warnings on cigarettes.
"All of these things have been proposed for the Government. But we need to have a national strategy in place if we're going to get there.
"We also need investment. We think this should be done through a levy on the tobacco industry.
"There's precious little other money out there, but the tobacco industry is immensely wealthy and can absolutely afford to resource this. We've got to get creative in thinking about other regulations, the Government has an ambition to be smoke free by 2030.
"Particularly for disadvantaged parts of society, we are not going to get there without some really serious new approaches."