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Bolton Council to spend £400K on stop smoking services
Bolton is set to spend a grant of more than £400,000 on stop smoking services alongside continued action against illicit tobacco sales.
This comes after a recent report found that smoking costs the borough an average of a staggering £95m a year in health services and lost productivity.
In response, the council has signed off on a plan to spend a £438,537 grant from the government on a range of extra local stop smoking services over the next five years.
At a town hall meeting, council cabinet member for adults, health and wellbeing, Cllr Sean Fielding, said: “It’s £95m spent on tobacco harm that could be spend on other preventative public services or other public services in general.
“So it's obviously welcome that we’ve got some more money to invest in helping people stop smoking.”
He added: “We want to be spending as much of this as possible on services to help people and not just on paying salaries at town hall.”
Source: Bolton News, 20 August 2024
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Figures show 125,000 North East smokers have quit by using vapes instead in the last five years
Half of people who stopped smoking across Great Britain did so by using vapes instead, according to new data.
That equates to almost 3m people nationwide - while in the North East there have been around 125,000 people in that position. This comes as leading health figures including a top respiratory doctor highlight how vapes can be "invaluable" in reducing smoking and the impact of lung disease.
Research from campaign groups Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and Fresh has reinforced how vaping can be a useful tool for stopping smoking. Nationally, more than 5.6m adults vape, 53% of them have stopped smoking.
And among those to have stopped smoking in the last five years, just over half said they had done so using vapes. In the North East, the figures suggest six in 10 of the 212,000 smokers to quit in the last five years did so by switching to the less harmful habit. That equates to around 125,000 people.
Dr Ruth Sharrock, who leads on tobacco dependency for the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System, said vapes had become invaluable when it comes to stopping smoking. She said: "In the North East we have been able to use vapes as an invaluable part of the strategy to help smokers to quit smoking. They are the most common quitting aid chosen by both hospital patients and staff members who are dependent on tobacco. These are very often people who have often given up hope of ever stopping.
"Switching to a vastly safer form of nicotine, without the thousands of chemicals in burned tobacco, feels like a really positive step for them. One patient described their Swap to Stop vape as a being 'like a free upgrade' rather than the 'punishment' of asking them to try to quit smoking. I hope better awareness of the benefits they can bring to people who currently smoke, enables many more people to try them."
Kerry Apedaile, is who leads the Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Trust's specialist tobacco dependence service said: “We find that vapes are a really important tool to help us support people who are admitted to our hospitals, where they cannot smoke.
"Many of our patients don’t want to use nicotine replacement therapy like patches, gum, or inhalators, but are much more open to using a vape to temporarily stop smoking during their hospital stay. Vapes help people to feel more in control of their nicotine withdrawal.
"The fact that a vape occupies your hands also allows people to continue the hand to mouth habitual behaviour they had with smoking, but without most of the toxic chemicals. We do risk assess all patients before offering vapes as a nicotine replacement option."
Source: Chronicle Live, 19 August 2024
See also: ASH - Nearly 3 million people in Britain have quit smoking with a vape in the last 5 years | Fresh and Balance - Nearly 3 million people in GB have quit smoking with a vape in last 5 years
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Psychiatric Disorders and Cigarette Use
Although the number of people who smoke cigarettes has dropped significantly since the mid-1960s, about 16% of the U.S. adult population still smoke. A much greater percentage of those with certain psychiatric disorders smoke cigarettes. A viewpoint recently published in JAMA Psychiatry by Robert Kleinman and Brian Barnett reviews important information about cigarette use by patients with psychiatric disorders and concludes that psychiatrists should prioritize smoking cessation with their patients. We would go further and extend that advice to all mental health professionals.
Data from the 2019 U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health indicate that 24% of individuals who had an episode of major depressive disorder in the previous year smoke. According to a study published in 2018, about 62% of those with schizophrenia and 37% of those with bipolar disorder smoke. Similarly, two to three times as many individuals with alcohol use disorder or other drug use disorders smoke cigarettes compared to the general adult population.
According to the “Tobacco, Nicotine, and E-Cigarettes Research Report” published in 2020 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), “smoking is the leading preventable cause of premature death in the United States,” killing about 480,000 persons a year. Cigarette use is a major reason for shortened life span in those with psychiatric disorders.
Data on the deleterious effects of smoking on physical health have motivated many to stop smoking. Individuals with psychiatric disorders are no different, and many indicate they would like to quit smoking. However, smoking cessation often is not addressed by their health care team, including mental health providers. Visits with primary care providers are often brief, but mental health professionals typically spend more time with patients and may interact with them on a more routine basis than primary care teams. Thus, they are in a key position to help this group of patients.
Although many of these concepts are analogous to those mental health professionals use to treat patients with psychiatric disorders, Kleinman and Barnett point out that many psychiatrists don’t have extensive experience providing smoking cessation treatment. The authors suggest that clinicians avail themselves of continuing medical education programs on tobacco cessation offered by the American Psychiatric Association.
Mental health professionals try to help patients decrease symptoms and improve everyday functioning and quality of life. Some clinicians may not consider addressing their patients’ addiction to cigarettes to be part of their charge. However, by addressing smoking cessation, mental health professionals can help substantially decrease long-term morbidity and mortality associated with psychiatric disorders.
Source: Psychology Today, 19 August 2024
See also: Kleinman RA, Barnett BS. Smoking Cessation as a Priority for Psychiatrists. JAMA Psychiatry. 2024
National Institute on Drug Abuse - Tobacco, Nicotine, and E-Cigarettes Research Report
National Center for Health Statistics - National Survey on Drug Use and Health
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.
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