[Bazf]

Helping smokers stop is cost effective. The cost per life year saved of a comprehensive treatment service is about £900. Many health economists and officials rate a treatment that costs from £5,000 to £10,000 per life year saved as very good value for money.
The development of NHS smoking cessation services means that the GP need do no more than give brief advice about stopping, prescribe a treatment and/or refer to the local service, rather than spend time trying to meet all the needs of smokers trying to quit.
Helping smokers stop will reduce the costs of treating other illnesses before they arise, releasing resources for other uses. Smoking is linked to over fifty diseases, of which over twenty are fatal. Stopping smoking significantly reduces the risk of these diseases, with some immediate gains. For example, the risk of some heart diseases and stroke falls by around a half within the first two years after stopping smoking.

Helping smokers stop will reduce surgery visits from patients as they become less vulnerable to colds, 'flu, and other illnesses indirectly linked to smoking.

Helping smokers stop will also help avoid the cost of treatment linked to the effects on smokers’ children. Around 17,000 children under five enter hospital each year with conditions such as asthma and glue ear as a result of their parents’ smoking.


Income tax rates are lower now than at any time since I have worked in the department and what isn't generated from that source must be recouped from elsewhere. The government-generated hysteria against smoking is a good ploy to enable the chancellor to levy higher and higher duty on tobacco without a public outcry. What a coup if the very people who are maintaining the NHS could be denied its services into the bargain.

The UK government earned £8,093 million in revenue from tobacco duty excluding VAT in the financial year 2003-04.
The UK goverment (NHS)spent 128,000 million on Smoking related diseases in the financial year 2003-4.


the same problem over there in the USA don't you, and from experience the weed is cheaper over there than here in the UK.

Don't you also have a major problem over there with the diet thing, over eating over weight as we have here in the UK, would you deny them national health service as well.


We dont have a national health service we pay for everything from a doctors vist to a flu shot and the weed is cheaper and it is banned in all pubs clubs and resturants in Florida and because of our weather anyone who wants to smoke can sit outside as for overweight or overeating same as smoking its a choice.