Young people took up smoking during the pandemic – how tobacco has been used for stress relief for more than a century

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In the UK and much of the west, smoking rates have consistently declined since the turn of the millennium. But during some of the most anxiety-ridden months of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, that rate of decline slowed almost to a stop.

What’s more, despite a rise in the rate of people trying to quit, there was a curious increase in the number of young people (aged 18 to 24) smoking for the first time.