The numbers paint a positive picture for cessation rates
in the UK. The region with the highest percentage of
successful quitters – Yorkshire and the Humber – peaked
at 58 percent, while the lowest – the south west – dipped
only seven points below average at 43 percent.
But the Stop Smoking Services are not just asking who
but how. Each report hopes to provide “in-depth analyses
of the key measures of the service including pregnant
women, breakdowns by ethnic group, socio-economic
classification, intervention type, intervention setting and
type of pharmacotherapy.”
Key facts from the report show that:
• 44 percent of the pregnant women who set a quit date
successfully quit
• 38 percent of people accessed Stop Smoking Services
through their GP
• 81 percent of people used one-to-one support to help
themselves quit smoking
• Quitting success increased with age, from 42 per
cent of those aged under 18, to 55 per cent of those
aged 60 and over
The methods of the Stop Smoking Services include,
“intensive support through group therapy or one-to-one
support. The support is designed to be widely accessible
within the local community and is provided by trained
personnel, such as specialist smoking cessation advisors
and trained nurses and pharmacists.”
“The most common pharmacotherapy was a combination of
licensed Nicotine Containing Products taken concurrently
(32 percent).”
What role could e-cigarettes play in all of this? These
findings bring to mind the words of Professor John Newton,
director of health improvement at Public Health England,
who told a recent Science and Technology committee, “The
large-scale surveys suggest there is a progression from
being a smoker, to using e-cigarettes, to stopping.”
The report confirms an ongoing pattern of escalating
smoking cessation and an increasingly prominent
role played by nicotine replacement via reduced harm
products. Though the NHS is only currently providing
nicotine replacement via inhalators, gum, nasal spray, oral
lozenges and strips and skin patches, their website’s Stop
Smoking section points to a potentially bright future for our
industry’s part to play in public health initiatives and closer
ties to healthcare:
“As with other approaches, [e-cigarettes] are most effective
if used with support from an NHS stop smoking service.
There are no e-cigarettes currently available on prescription.
But once medicinally licensed e-cigarette products become
available, GPs and stop smoking services will be able to
prescribe them.”
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