Since the NHS rolled out its smoking cessation programme in 2001, it claims that almost 1.4m people have given up smoking as a result of the £470m it has spent on stop-smoking clinics, nicotine replacement therapies and the anti-depressant Zyban, which reduces the craving for cigarettes.

But the proportion of the adult population that smokes in England has remained constant at 24 per cent, according to official figures. The actual number who smoke has, if anything, grown.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of adult smokers is up from about 9.5m in 2001 to nearer 9.9m in 2006, although that increase in part reflects a growth in the adult population. It may also reflect high rates of smoking among migrants from eastern Europe, according to the anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health.

The sharp discrepancy between the numbers smoking and the NHS’s claim that 1.4m have quit comes because the Department of Health measures “quitters” as those who have stopped smoking for just four weeks – although its own research shows that 90 per cent of those who stop end up starting again within two years.

Colin Talbot, professor of public policy at Manchester Business School, said: “These figures suggest that not only has the government’s campaign not actually reduced smoking at all, but at the same time they were spending £500m the proportion smoking actually flat-lined when it had – up until then – been falling.

“Common sense alone ought to have told health department officials that a four-week cessation was likely to be highly misleading. The department clearly needs to review both the anti-smoking campaign and how it measures its effectiveness.”

The programme was defended, however, by Robert West, director of tobacco studies at Cancer Research UK’s health behaviour unit at University College London.

He estimates that only 20 per cent of the 1.4m are likely to have given up smoking successfully in the long term, and two-thirds of those might well have given up anyway. But even if the programme had stopped only 100,000 people smoking it remained “a very cheap way of saving lives – much, much cheaper than heart operations and tablets to control blood pressure”, Professor West said.

The Department of Health rejected the idea that the programme had been ineffective. It said independent academic research in the journal Addiction had judged it to be “extremely cost effective” and indeed “the most cost-effective of any intervention” provided by the NHS.

However, Alan Maynard, professor of health economics at the University of York, said it was “very sad that the NHS has spent so much money on this to so little effect”. Scottish evidence suggested the ban on smoking in public places recently introduced in England might have a far bigger health impact, he said.

The NHS is spending about £100m a year on the stop-smoking programme at a time when the growth rate of NHS spending is set to slow.

From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e311008a-7ab9-11dc-9bee-0000779fd2ac.html

Whilst Health Direct acknowledges the importance of reducing smoking, why doesn’t labour target the more serious damage that drinking alcohol causes both to it’s imbibers and the NHS in treating the more resultant harm?

On Aug 02, 06 Heath Direct posted- Risks of taking drugs compared- Scientific review of dangers of drugtaking- Drugs, the real deal

Health Direct reproduced the first ranking based upon scientific evidence of harm to both individuals and society. It was devised by labour government advisers – then ignored by labour ministers because of its controversial findings.

The analysis was carried out by David Nutt, a senior member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and Colin Blakemore, the chief executive of the Medical Research Council. Copies of the report have been submitted to the Home Office, which has failed to act on the conclusions.

The rankings concluded that Alcohol (Legal) was ranked at number Five, Tobacco (Legal) at number Nine and Cannabis (Class C) at Number 11.