The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7211 p207
17 August 2002

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Department of Health: Statistics & Surveys (more)

Half who try to quit smoking on the NHS are successful

Half of all smokers in England who seek help from the National Health Service and set a date to give up smoking are successful four weeks later, according to new Department of Health statistics. Success is defined as not having smoked at all since two weeks after the quit date.

From April 2001 to March 2002, 227,308 people tried to give up smoking with help from the NHS and 119,813 were successful. The Government's target was for 50,000 people to give up the habit. Women form a small majority among people setting dates to give up smoking, by men are marginally more successful at actually doing so.

The Government claims that seven out of 10 people who smoke want to stop. To help them it spent over £53m on smoking cessation services up to March 2002. A further £20m is to be spent in the current year, plus the cost of prescribed cessation aids, including medicines.

Most people who try to give up smoking with help from the NHS do so using nicotine replacement therapy or bupropion. Around 63 per cent of people receive NRT only, 19 per cent are treated with bupropion and 2 per cent try both.

The Department's figures are based on people's unverified claims to have successfully stopped smoking. Most of those who claimed to have stopped smoking (89,748) agreed to a carbon monoxide breath test to verify their claim. Although the tests confirmed that most had given up, they showed that 9,980 people had not, in fact, done so.