35,000 in poverty because of smoking says action group

Quitting smoking could lift 35,000 people in the North East out of poverty, according to new figures.

New analysis of Governmentdata–byActiononSmoking and Health (ASH) – reveals that as well as the death and disease caused by smoking, tobacco addiction is resulting in poverty for working age adults, children and pensioners.

Smokingstatisticsinclude: *35,000 people in the North East,beingdrivenintopoverty.

*9,000 of these people are children.

*15,000 additional households living in poverty *5,000 North East pensioners living in poverty.

*Poverty rates would drop from 36% to 27% is no-one smoked

*The average starting age for smokers in the North East is 15.

*Smoking costs the North East economy £613.8m a year.

Ash say that, without the costs of smoking, poverty rates would reduce from almost a third (36%) of households which include at least one smoker to around one in five (27%).

North East anti smoking group Fresh – with ASH – are calling for a charge levied on multinational tobacco companies in a “polluter pays” approach to fund prevention measures.

Ailsa Rutter OBE, director of Fresh, said: “Besides disease and death, these figures show how tobacco smoking inflicts the further misery of poverty on families and communities.

“The numbers don’t include the hardship faced by people who have had to give up work due to smoking-related ill health.“Tobacco companies like to claim that smoking is an adult choice but the fact is that most smokers get addicted as children. They profit from the addictive, killer product.”