Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, the number of people smoking cigarettes fell sharply but this decline levelled out during the 1990s. Smoking remains concentrated in areas of social inequalities . Smoking rates among young teenagers and women during pregnancy are also particular areas of concern for health professionals and policy makers, and national targets have been set relating to these. These figures reveal some of the costs associated with long term tobacco use - some of them economic costs but mainly the toll on human lives of tobacco related disease and early death .
Surveys differ in their methods and sample sizes.
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