TOBACCO POLICY SPECIAL
Dr Eleanor Winpenny, a researcher with think tank 2020health, argues that public health campaigns on smoking cessation have been very successful and should be emulated in other areas.
T
he reduction in smoking rates from 70% of men and 40% of women in the
1960s to around 20% of the population to- day should be regarded as a success of pub- lic education and government policy. The evidence on the link between smoking and cancer began to come together in the 1950s but the Government were initially reluc- tant to accept this evidence or to proscribe to adults how they should behave. As the evidence continued to build up, local health authorities were given the responsibility to educate the public about the risks but re- ceived no extra funding for this.
The major drive for change came from the Royal College of Physicians report, ‘Smok- ing and Health’, published in March 1962. This report presented the evidence that smoking is an important cause of lung can-
26 | national health executive Nov/Dec 11
‘Risky drinkers’ is an often overlooked category
covering those who tend to drink a lot each night – typically wine – but do not often get drunk, and so don’t consider themselves to have a problem.
cer and is also related to many other condi- tions. Written for the ordinary reader, the report gained wide press coverage. The im- mediate result of this report was a £50,000 education campaign and the development of smoking cessation clinics.
In 1997, the newly-elected Labour govern- ment announced the fi rst tobacco White Paper, named ‘Smoking Kills’. Television advertising of tobacco products was fi rst banned in the UK under the Television Act 1964, but in 2002 almost all tobacco adver- tising was banned throughout the United Kingdom and health warnings on all tobac- co packaging were made mandatory.
Other developments were the launch of NHS Stop Smoking Services in 1999, expenditure on which has increased to
£83.9m in 2009-10, and fi nally a ban on smoking in workplaces and all indoor pub- lic places was implemented in England in July 2007.
In 2009, 21% of all adults in England smoked, and treating diseases caused by smoking still costs the NHS approximately £2.7bn per year. Remarkable similari- ties can be drawn here between smoking and risky drinking – alcohol cost the NHS £2.9bn in 2008/9 and around 20% of the population are risky drinkers.
Risky drinkers are those who are drinking alcohol at levels which are harming their health, who are binge drinking, or who are alcohol dependent. A typical risky drinker will be drinking two or three glasses of wine or equivalent each night. They do not
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