From The Guardian:
Fewer people aged 35 and over are dying in England because of their smoking habit, figures suggest, although hospital admissions linked to tobacco usage are rising slightly.
From 2003-13 – a decade which saw the introduction of a ban on smoking in public places and a rise in cigarette prices – the proportion of all deaths in the 35+ age group estimated to be caused by smoking fell from 19% to 17%...
Fewer than one in five people over 16 smoked in 2013, the lowest proportion since recording started in the 1940s. More than a quarter smoked in 2003...
So if just under a fifth of all adults smoke, and just under a fifth die from smoking, that means that all smokers die from smoking, yes?
Nope:
The British Heart Foundation said tobacco products still killed about half the people who used them and doubled a person’s chance of having a heart attack or stroke.
Unlike non-smokers, who live forever, presumably, placing absolutely zero cost on the social security system or the NHS or anything whatsoever.
Moving on:
The number of prescriptions for treating smoking dependency dropped from a peak of 2.6m in 2010-11 to 1.8m in 2013-14. Cheeseman [policy director at Ash] recognised rising use of e-cigarettes might be a factor, but said people who found quitting smoking most difficult would benefit from properly structured, evidence-based support from the NHS.
When a lot (i.e. all) of the evidence shows that smokers who start vaping tend to smoke a lot less - which is the whole bloody point of vaping - and very, very few non-smokers start vaping.
Mike Hobday [The British Heart Foundation's] director of policy, said: “These figures show current strategies to help people quit smoking aren’t going far enough... The government urgently needs a new strategy to help people stop smoking. With tobacco companies continually raising their prices...
Cigarette prices are dictated largely by the amount of duty on them; the cost net of taxes is around 50p wherever you go in Europe.
... this needs to include an annual levy on these companies to fund tobacco control and stop smoking services to help support people to quit.”
Actual tobacco company profits are a few per cent of the total tax already imposed on a packet of cigarettes.
Chris Woodhall, senior policy adviser at Cancer Research UK, said: “We want to see a tobacco-free country within the next 20 years – where fewer than five per cent of adults smoke. Falling smoking rates among adults and children show that we’re moving in the right direction, but we must do more to realize this ambitious public health goal.”
Tobacco free = fewer than five per cent smoke?
FFS.
Debate Magazine
