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1 in 5 people quitting smoking rely on their local pharmacists for advice according to survey data collected from the 'Smoke Free' digital app. 16% of smokers surveyed also said they would go to a pharmacist as their first port of call for stop smoking advice.
The app data found that 10% of smokers who were going to quit decided not to once the pandemic hit. Behavioural scientist and founder of the Smoke Free app, Dr David Crane, said: “there is good evidence that COVID-19 is motivating some people to quit, but the data we’ve gathered indicates that it’s having the opposite effect on others. For them, COVID-19 has actually increased their desire to smoke.”
Dr Crane added that: "We, and I say this as an ex-smoker, think smoking makes us feel better. It doesn’t really of course, in fact people usually say they’re happier after they’ve quit. But believing smoking increases pleasure or reduces pain might explain why some people are smoking more now.”
Deborah Arnott, Chief Executive of ASH, said “While at population level more smokers are quitting than before and quitting more successfully, not all smokers are quitting – some are not, some are smoking more, and some having quit have relapsed back to smoking. Stopping smoking isn’t easy and the more help and support smokers get the more likely they are to succeed.”
Source: Pharmacy Business, 28 October 2020
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Professor John P.A. Ioannidis, Stanford University, and Professor Prabhat Jha, University of Toronto, write in The Lancet that the acceptance of major public health interventions to curb COVID-19 could open the door to more substantial public health interventions on tobacco. The authors argue that if actions taken to address COVID-19, which have had major impacts on markets and wider society, are deemed defensible, then so should significant actions taken to eliminate tobacco use, including action to reduce tobacco supply, as the risk-benefit ratio is even more favourable.
The authors "acknowledge that bans on tobacco products overnight might meet public resistance (reducing the currently high support for tobacco control, even among smokers)." They suggest that "a realistic strategy would be to set a clear future date when sales would be banned, with a transition period of heavily taxed sales only through prescribed government shops. Another helpful strategy might be to buy out tobacco cultivators in producing countries and to impose growing restrictions on imports for other countries."
The authors conclude that it would be "devastating" if the tobacco industry "emerge as a winner" in the post COVID-19 world and that given major decisions in the interests of health have publicly supported on the grounds of urgency and need in light of the pandemic, a unique opportunity exists to "eliminate the tobacco industry."
Source: The Lancet, 28 October 2020
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A survey of 1,000 New Zealand adults found that being a smoker was the least attractive trait in a partner (38%), ahead of having a criminal past (28%). Psychologist Sara Chatwin said Kiwis find smoking offensive because it "flies in the face of the emphasis we put on good health".
The survey also suggested that unhealthy behaviours had increased over lockdown in New Zealand, with almost half of respondents reporting alcohol consumption had increased, and around 39% of smokers reporting smoking more.
Source: Newshub, 29 October 2020
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