It’s time to stub it out once and for all
FIFTEEN years ago one of the most important and popular pieces of public health legislation ever was introduced – the smoke-free law. Rarely has one law protected so many from one day to the next.
People used to come home from the office or factory, the shops or an evening out having breathed in poisonous secondhand tobacco smoke. Millions of workers endured this for hours on a daily basis, causing illness and death. The law was a turning point which resulted in more people quitting, millions protected from smoke and high acceptance and compliance.
Despite efforts of tobacco companies to derail it, MPs across the political spectrum overwhelmingly voted in favour of a law from which we are still benefitting and which will continue to protect children into the future.
Across our region we have made good progress reducing smoking rates by working together in partnership with the NHS and local communities. And yet smoking is still our biggest killer, and we know this is nearly always an addiction that starts in childhood. Tobacco smoke causes 16 types of cancer, heart disease, lung disease, dementia, stroke and childhood illness. It’s a driver of poverty too and it robs people of many years of life and has a negative impact on the economy and for our businesses when they lose their staff through preventable illness. That’s why we now need a discussion about ending smoking once and for all.
We therefore welcome the recent publication of the Khan Review “Making Smoking Obsolete - an independent review into smoke-free 2030 policies”. As Khan states if we do nothing different, by 2030 over half a million more people in England will have died from smoking.
The review makes 15 farreaching recommendations including additional investment to support smokers to quit, more awareness campaigns, action to reduce illegal tobacco and underage sales and making tobacco companies pay some of their huge profits towards prevention. It also suggests that the age of sale should be raised to 21, which we would support as no other product gets most customers hooked as children and ends up killing two out of three lifelong customers.
Eight million people have died from smoking in the UK since the early 1970s and action to reduce smoking is highly popular because whoever you are, most of us have lost a loved one to smoking and don’t want our children or grandchildren to start. Most smokers would like to stop and many deeply regret starting in the first place.