Wednesday 13 March 2013

National No Smoking Day

Today is National No Smoking Day - a day when smokers across the country are encouraged to quit smoking.

According to the official No Smoking Day website it is estimated that up to 750,000 smokers will try and quit smoking today. However, experience from the past shows that the overwhelming majority of these people will be smoking again tomorrow, with even more returning to smoking within a month.

Is there a better way than throwing away millions of pounds of public money on events such as these ?

A report (PDF) of the cost-effectiveness of National No Smoking Day found that an estimated 0.07% of smokers quit as a result, and therefore decided that the day was "extremely cost effective". Eh ?

So the measure of "extreme" success is 0.07% as far as stopping smoking is concerned.

If only there was a way to generate results that were one hundred times more successful than this 0.07% and yet cost absolutely no public money at all - wouldn't you expect this to be blasted out and promoted all the time on TV, Radio and every other form of media  ?

Well there is an answer. There is a way that smokers who don't want to quit or who cannot quit can stop using tobacco.

One person who would know the answer is Professor Gerry Stimson, a worldwide expert in Public Health.

He took to Twitter yesterday to urge his friends and followers who smoke to do this :

And then later on followed this up with :


Yes, the answer is simple.

Instead of spending a fortune of public money attempting to get 0.07% of smokers to quit, why not just tell smokers to use an electronic cigarette instead ? 

Simple really.

1 comment:

  1. Good luck with trying to do something with ECCA- you're a welcome change, a voice of reason rather than the Student Grant tinfoil hat politics that has sabotaged it so far.

    Your position as a retailer is irrelevant- there's no need for such purity. All that has achieved is the exclusion of people like the VapourTrails crew, and the idea that their editorial virginity is so precious that they cannot be in ECCA and give and honest reviews is tosh.

    You sell juice and you consume it. Selling it does not make you an enemy of consumers. The market is still small enough for us to need to hang together. Intelligent, articulate voices are what we need and you're one of those. Good luck with ECCA.

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