Record Numbers Attempt To Give Up Smoking, UK

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 15 Sep 2007 - 16:00 PDT

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New figures have revealed that the number of people trying to quit smoking in East Lancashire has increased since the smoking ban was implemented.

Hundreds of people across Blackburn and Darwen have taken the opportunity to try and stop smoking since the ban. The number of people wanting to give up smoking was 411 between June and August 2006. For the same period this year the figure was 890.

The success has been even greater in the East Lancashire Primary Care Trust's areas covering Burnley, Pendle Rossendale, Hyndrun and Ribble Valley where 548 attempted to give up smoking in the three month period in 2006 compared with 1,249 this year.

Gina Turner, a communications officer for Lancashire Constabulary, is one of the smokers has given up since July 1st.

She said: "I smoked for 10 years and would smoke twenty cigarettes a day. With the smoking ban, you have to go outside, away from your friends."

"This encouraged me stop smoking. Now when I go out I do not even feel the urge to smoke while I'm drinking, it would be too much of a chore," she said.

A spokesman for East Lancashire PCT's smoking cessation service said: "It has been busier this year than the previous year and the amount of telephone calls we have received from members of the public has increased also."

A spokesman for the Smokefree England campaign, the public body behind the smoking ban campaign, said the results mirrored those found wherever legislation had been introduced, such as Ireland, Scotland and New York.

"We have worked very closely with the Department of Health to give people the opportunity, as a result of the legislation, to stop smoking if that was what they wished to do. We are pleased to hear, anecdotally, that these figures reflect this out," he added.

Martin Dockrell, policy and campaigns manager for ASH, said: "It is very promising news that more people are trying to quit smoking."

"The really encouraging news is that 70 per cent of smokers want to stop and that smokefree workplaces, pubs and restaurants have made this easier," he said.

http://www.ash.org.uk

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