Data shows cost of quitting smoking
NEW data shows Hampshire County Council is spending £682 per person to help them quit smoking, while Portsmouth and Southampton invested £1,064.19 and £1,044.78, respectively.
The amounts, from April to June this year according to NHS statistics, includes the cost of prescribed medication such as Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT), bupropion (including branded medicine Zyban) and varenicline (including branded medicine Champix).
In recent publications, NHS Stop Smoking Services revealed the cost of local authorities helping people to quit smoking. It showed more than five million adults in England still smoke, and smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable illness and death in the country – linked to 64,000 deaths a year.
Despite the county council being the authority with the least expenditure per person, compared with Portsmouth and Southampton, Hampshire has allocated £2.2million to help people quit smoking for the year, excluding prescribed medication. From the total, £479,096 had been spent up to June.
As of June, the authority had reported and supported 702 people who successfully quit smoking.
During the Health and Adult Social Care Select Committee meeting on November 21, a report showed a continuing trend for rising numbers of referrals of pregnant smokers to the stop smoking service during 2022/23.
There are also rising numbers of pregnant smokers setting a quit date, quitting for four weeks and remaining quit after 12 weeks.
The report also said the NHS Long Term Plan tobacco dependency programme has increased collaboration across the system.
Over the last year, the Smokefree Hampshire Service and Public Health Commissioners have worked with maternity services to support the new in-house maternity stop smoking service, including training new tobacco dependency advisers (TDA) for maternity and ensuring a uniform approach across the system.
As part of the Government’s plan to create a ‘smokefree generation’ by 2040, it is anticipated that the county council will receive £1.5m per year in additional support until 2028/29, the majority of which is expected to be spent on expanding the Hampshire Stop Smoking Service.