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The NHS is spending more than ever on helping smokers quit - but the number of people giving up has dropped.
New figures show the health service spent £74million on "stop smoking" services in the past year, compared with £61million the year before.
But the number of people trying to quit dropped from 680,000 to 670,000 in that time, and the number of those people who managed to stay off cigarettes for more than four weeks dropped from 350,000 to 337,000.
The Government introduced a ban on smoking in public places in July 2007. In the year leading up to the ban 600,000 smokers tried to give up, at a cost of £51million, and 320,000 of those were successful.
A Department of Health source said smokers trying to quit are now increasingly dependent and "harder to help".
Tim Straughan, chief executive of the NHS Information Centre, which produced the figures, said: "The report shows that fewer people successfully quit last year compared with 2007/08. However, 2007/08 saw the introduction of the ban on smoking in public places which would be expected to affect the number of quitters in that year.
"It is encouraging that more people quit smoking last year than in 2006/07, the year prior to the ban."
Today's figures also show that the amount spent per smoker has risen each year from £160 per quitter in 2006-2007 to £219 this year.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said smokers who quit with NHS support are more than four times more likely to have long-term success than those who do so without help.
Reader views (12)
According to these figures, 680,000 to 670,000 or to put it another way 0.56% of smokers tried to give up at a cost of £74 million. 99.4% did not try to give up smoking.a complete waste of 'OUR' money, is it time to start arresting these officials & charging them with gross incompetance?
there are more young smokers now than before the ban now that the government has made it 'Cool' again.
As over 40% of the electorate are smokers, & 99% are not stopping. Is'nt it time that the government learned by its mistakes & concead defeat before they are defeated at the election
- Jon Kenney, Birmingham England
still waiting to get a reply from any of the smoking ban fanatics justifying why dying patients and service men and women should be denied a cigarette.
is it that they are too ashamed to admit to such an inhumane attitude.
come on let us hear from you all and your reasons for doing so
- Jim Lawler, east kilbride
. questions to all of the supporters of the smoking ban
would any of you justify forcing dying or very ill human beings to vacate hospital grounds while still tubed up in some cases to get the comfort they may find in a cigarette
are you pleased to see young soldiers back from fighting for democracy abroad,badly injured and scarred for life being told they can not have a ciggy with their pint in their local legeon club.
if the banners can justify this i will give up my own long life enjoyable habit
however if they can not they too should ask for some changes to the ill thought out ban and call for humane excemptions
- Jim Lawler, east kilbride
Rob, Peterborough: Another amateur 'trick cyclist' who knows why I enjoy things or not! Just where would we be without these kind people and their Govt. taking so much interest in my life and welfare? (living quietly and peacefully, I imagine)
What a waste of money. 320,000 given up? do we really know it or is it just what they say? as in 'I've told my Dr. I've given up but not my tobacconist'.
Nonsense is putting it politely.
- Frank, London
I think it is shocking that the NHS is allowed to waste £74 million in one year on spreading the governments and there properganda, while there is long waiting list for kidney, liver and heart operations, a shortage of beds in hospitals and treatment people need for things like diabetes and now swine flu, what a waste of tax payers money.
- Clif E, London UK
Richard from Cheltenham neglects to write that smokers contribute £8.1 bn anually, while the NHS spends only £2 bntreating smoking related diseases. Smokers dying younger also reduces the amount spent on pensions and residence for the elderly. Subsequently smokers demonstrably contribute positively to the economy and any economic argument against smoking is weak. Proposals that smoking related diseases should not be treated on the NHS are equally economically ludicrous given that an average smoker more than pays for the cost of his treatment during his lifetime. Moreover it opens a slippery slope towards selective treatment; surely it would be inequitous not to treat smokers who make choices about risks but to treat motorists who make similar choices. The attitudes of such arguments and articles that denormalise or demonise smoking are mirrored in government and this has resulted in witchunts restricting the making of an informed choice about what is ultimately a morally neutral acctivity, which is surely against the principle of a liberal democracy.
- Eliot Hearson, Wiltshire
Richard, an average 20 a day smoker pays £1,456 a year more in tax than you do ( £4x7x52 )or £72,800 in 50 yrs so they have paid the £8000 nine times you could say they are funding their own medical care plus 8 others. as there are over 11million smokers that equates to 99million peoples healthcare, not bad in a population of 60 million.
In the case you talk about if smokers should pay for healthcare, so should people whos lifestyle can cause them harm, Drinkers, the Obese, anyone indulging in sports, motorists involved in accidents, workers who choose to work in a dangerous enviroment, the list is endless, what you suggest is the thin end of a wedge that when driven home will split society.
It is a proven fact that smokers are amongst the healthiest in the country, and that most live well into their 80,s, and they occupy far less of NHS time than others.
I will admit that Tobacco smoke is an irritant, but no more so than petrol and diesel fumes that we are forced to breath in on a daily basis and not as lethal or carciogenic, think of that when you next start your car that you are putting a lethal cocktail into the air equivalent to well over 100 cigarettes for every minute that you drive.
I am a non smoker but get fed up with the drivel people repeat just because it comes from the anti everything league who prostitute the name of science to prove their point.
- Tony, Leicester
My understanding is that, over their lifetime, smokers on average costs the NHS around £8,000 more than non-smokers. Of course smokers who quit are already part way through their life but even if the saving is just £3,000 then the £219 per head seems very good value for money for the taxpayer. The only other option is to exclude smoking related diseases from cover by the NHS and make the sufferer pay the additional costs. I think the £219 is worth it in that light.
Those who point out that some smokers live a long time and older people came from a generation that smoked more readily fail to notice that most people who live a long time were either non-smokers or light smokers; that not all people who smoke get smoking related diseases but a far greater proportion of them do, and even if there was no health problem with smoking, the smell of tobacco smoke is so foul to many people it's like encouraging people to belch and fart in other people's presence. Bad manners and unpleasant.
- Richard, Cheltenham
This is typical of the anti-smoking health fascists
running the NHS and in government. What is it with these
muppets, have they nothing better to do with their sad
lives, but order, bully and intimmidate people to changing
their lifestyles. It's none of their business!
"Tim Straughan, chief executive of the NHS Information Centre" - how much is this buffoon paid? Why does the
NHS need an information centre anyway? How much does
all this cost the taxpayer?
- Lb, Bromley
This article is written like smoking is a bad thing?!
- Frank, Home Counties, England.
More abject spin and waffle from the Department of Health.
Correct me if I am wrong, but when there were mining disasters in the UK and those trapped underground were brought to the surface, the first human being those miners saw was a Salvation Army member giving out lighted cigarettes to the disorientated miners.
WHY are there countless millions of peeps in the UK today who are over 80 years old? They lived through an era when cigarettes were 8 packets of 20 for ONE POUND, you could not see across the top deck of a London bus or see from one side of the nearest bar to the other through dense smoke.
IF CIGARETTES CAUSE SO MUCH OF A HEALTH HAZARD, WHY DOESN'T DIZZY DARLING TOTALLY BAN CIGARETTES?
Oh! Silly me! WHAT! AND LOSE THE GBP5,000,000,000.00pa TAX REVENUE?
- Reuben Camara, Principality of Morecambe, EUSSR
I stopped smoking over a year ago, pretty much instantly, i bought a volcano! XD
Combustion was so last century, the funny thing is how twisted nicotine makes peoples minds, they actually think they enjoy it, they're ignorant of their own consciousnesses chemical makeup and how easily it is influenced, even when theyre the ones doing it to themselves!
- Rob, Peterborough
