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A North East respiratory doctor is making a powerful plea for smokers to quit for Covid-19 and other vital health reasons in a major new campaign launching this week on TV, radio, digital and social media. The campaign – across the North East and North Cumbria - is being launched by Fresh, the regional tobacco control office, with the North East and North Cumbria NHS Integrated Care System Prevention Board.
Consultant Dr Ruth Sharrock, from Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust and a member of Gateshead Smokefree Alliance, said: “We all want to protect ourselves and our families right now, but that is especially important if you smoke. In the last few months we have seen the awful effects of Covid-19 across our hospitals and communities. We already know smoking causes many diseases, and harms the lungs and immune system and making it harder for the body to fight off infection. This means if you do get coronavirus, symptoms may be more severe. I am really proud to support this campaign and to share my own experiences, hoping that it inspires more people to make quit attempts."
Ailsa Rutter, director of Fresh, said: “There has possibly never been a more important time to quit smoking than right now. The coronavirus pandemic is focusing everyone’s minds on staying healthy and for people who smoke, quitting is an incredibly important step. We know that some people think it is too late to see any benefits from quitting smoking, but the fact is that there are health benefits to be gained from quitting at any age. We are delighted to see such support from our NHS and from Directors of Public Health to raise this important message and to encourage more smokers to quit.”
Source: Northern Echo, 17 June 2020
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Two in five people using Hertfordshire County Council's stop smoking services managed to quit smoking successfully, new figures reveal. NHS Digital data shows 1,405 people on the NHS Stop Smoking Service in the county set a date to quit between April and December last year. At follow-up meetings held at a later date, 565 said they had given up - equivalent to 40% of service users.
31% of service users across Hertfordshire quit when only counting those who confirmed this with a test to measure carbon monoxide (CO) levels in their bloodstream. The self-reported rate in county was below the average of 51% across England as a whole – this decreased to 36% nationally for those CO tested.
There was a wide disparity between different areas – 83% of smokers in Warrington and Cheshire reported quitting compared to just 11% in Cumbria. The charity ASH said the variation in the support smokers can receive across the country “is not good enough” adding that: “All smokers deserve support to quit and for many it can make the difference between success and failure. However, good services need funding and national government has repeatedly cut the public health budget. We are now in the midst of a respiratory pandemic with the biggest impacts being felt by the most disadvantaged, and while local authorities are doing their best, if we’re to ensure that all smokers get the help they need, those cuts to the public health budget must be reversed.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said “We are not complacent and our ambition is for England to become a smoke-free society by 2030. Prevention remains at the heart of our NHS Long Term Plan, and this year we have made £3 billion of funding available to support local authorities, including stop smoking services."
Source: Watford Observer, 16 June 2020
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The US government's "delay" on banning menthol cigarettes has made black Americans, historically targeted by tobacco companies for menthol cigarette use, vulnerable to new respiratory disease like COVID-19, says a lawsuit filed by the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council (AATCLC) on Wednesday, 17 June.
The Council told a California federal judge that the Department of Health and Human Services' and the Food and Drug Administration's refusal to take menthol flavored tobacco off the shelf has led to thousands of premature deaths, especially in the African American community. AATCLC brought the class suit together with Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) US.
The NGOs said 85% of African American smokers use menthol cigarettes, and smoking-related diseases are the number one cause of death in the community. The groups also cited an April advisory from Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey warning that "flavored tobacco products could make lung infections like COVID-19 worse."
The group cited a 2011 FDA report saying that if menthol cigarettes had been removed from the marketplace in 2010, about 17,000 premature deaths would have been avoided by 2020, and about 2.3 million people wouldn't have started smoking. For the black community, that means about "4,700 premature deaths would have been avoided, and about 461,000 African Americans would not have started smoking," the groups said. The groups are asking the federal court to compel the government agencies to respond to their petition, reevaluate tobacco product standards, and rule to ban menthol cigarettes.
Source: Law360, 17 June 2020
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