Smoking
2.2 Smoking is the cause of a third of all cancers. Since the widespread availability of cigarettes there has been a huge increase in deaths from lung cancer, which was previously a rare disease.
From the 1950s, evidence of the serious health effects and the fatal diseases caused by cigarette smoking has been accumulating. Smoking not only causes most cases of lung cancer but is the major cause of cancers of the mouth, nasal passages, larynx, bladder and pancreas. It also plays a part in causing cancers of the oesophagus, stomach, kidney and in leukaemia.
2.3 Smoking kills people. In total smoking kills around 120,000 people in the UK per year and over half a million in the European Union. It is addictive and two thirds of smokers want to quit across all socio-economic groups. Many smokers have managed to stop and this is reflected in the falling rate of lung cancer in men. The evidence is clear: there are very positive health gains of stopping smoking at whatever age. Stopping smoking, even well into middle age, avoids most of the subsequent risk of lung cancer and stopping before middle age avoids 90% of the risk attributable to tobacco.
2.4 Smoking is also the major cause of health inequalities. In 1998 in England, 15% of those in the professional socioeconomic groups smoked compared to 36% in the unskilled manual group. If all men of working age, irrespective of socioeconomic group, had the same mortality rates from lung cancer as those in professional groups then there would be 2,300 fewer deaths from lung cancer each year.
2.5 People have a right to smoke, and make their own choices about how to live their lives. But as smoking is so addictive and harmful, the government's role is to ensure people are fully informed about the risks, and have a real choice about whether to quit.
2.6 The government's strategy for reducing smoking is set out in the White Paper Smoking Kills. Targets were set to reduce smoking in children from 13% in 1996 to 9% in 2010, in adults from 28% in 1996 to 24% by 2010 and in pregnant women from 23% in 1995 to 15% by 2010. Achieving these targets will mean around 1.5 million fewer smokers in England.
2.7 The tobacco control strategy already includes:
- the commitment to ban tobacco advertising
- new specialist NHS smoking cessation services
- Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) will be available on prescription from GPs
- the Committee on Safety of Medicines will also be asked to consider whether NRT can be made available for general sale rather than only through pharmacies or on prescription
- Zyban, a new treatment to help smokers give up, available on prescription from primary care
- updated guidance on smoking cessation for health care professionals and commissioners from the Health Development Agency (HDA)
- a new best practice code to enforce the law against cigarette sales to children under 16
- a new media campaign and an NHS smokers helpline.
