This fact sheet includes statistics on tobacco consumption and smoking-related illness and death. April 2020.
This interactive visual was created by the ONS. It illustrates smoking prevalence in every local authority in England, as well as a breakdown by gender. The tool also shows how smoking rates have changed over the period from 2012-2016.
20 September 2016
In advance of the annual Stoptober stop smoking campaign, ASH is calling on the Government to increase the frequency and the amount of money spent on stop smoking campaigns.
Deborah Arnott Chief Executive of ASH said,
“ASH strongly supports Stoptober which provides the support and encouragement that we know most smokers need to help them stop. However, we are very concerned about the recent announcement by the Health Minister in the Lords that funding for mass campaigns like Stoptober has been cut again this year. The evidence is clear, to be successful mass media campaigns need to run throughout the year; Stoptober alone is not enough.”
During a parliamentary debate, the Health Minister, Lord Prior said that the expenditure allocated for this financial year was £4 million.* Last year it was £5.3 million and it has declined significantly in the last 6 years; in 2008-09 it was nearly £25 million.
Financial year[1] | Media Spend (£m) |
2008-09 | 23.38 |
2009-10 | 24.91 |
2010-11 | 0.46 |
2011-12 | 3.16 |
2012-13 | 8.21 |
2013-14 | 7.64 |
2014-15 | 6.92 |
2015-16 | 5.3 |
ASH is also calling on the Government to publish without delay its new Tobacco Control Plan, replacing the previous one which expired at the end of 2015. The new plan needs to clearly set out how the Government intends to fund tobacco control including mass media campaigns and Stop Smoking Services.
ENDS
Contact: Deborah Arnott 020 7404 0242 (w) or 07976 935 987 (m)
Notes and links:
Action on Smoking and Health is a health charity working to eliminate the harm caused by tobacco use. For more information see: www.ash.org.uk/about-ash
ASH receives core funding from Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation.
* Hansard. HoL Debate. Lord Prior of Brampton: “£4 million has been allocated for tobacco-specific marketing activities, £1 million of which is for the Stoptober campaign launching next month.”
https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2016-09-14/debates/16091442000095/Smoking-RelatedDiseases
Effectiveness of Mass media campaigns
[i] Langley T. et al. The impact of media campaigns on smoking cessation activity: a structural vector autoregression analysis, Addiction 2012, 107(11):2043-50.
[ii] Hopkinson NS, Millett C, Glantz S, Arnott D, and McNeill A (2016) UK government should fund stop smoking media campaigns not give tax breaks to films with smoking imagery. Addiction. doi: 10.1111/add.13511
[iii] Sims M, Salway R, Langley T. et al.. Effectiveness of tobacco control television advertising in changing tobacco use in England: a population-based cross-sectional study Addiction. 2014 109 (6): 986-94
[iv] Langley T, Szatkowski L, Lewis S et al. The freeze on mass media campaigns in England: a natural experiment of the impact of tobacco control campaigns on quitting behaviour. Addiction 2014: 109: 995-1002
[v] Atusingwize E, Lewis S, Langley T. Economic evaluations of tobacco control mass media campaigns: a systematic review Tobacco Control 2015: 24: 320-327
[vi] Durkin S & Wakefield M. Commentary on Sims et al. (2014) and Langley et al. (2014) Mass media campaigns require adequate and sustained funding to change population health behaviours. Addiction 2014: 109: 1003-1004.