Free NHS Stop Smoking Quit Kit

Smokers are being offered a free “quit kit”, featuring calming audio downloads and a stress toy, in an effort to help them kick their habit in the new year.

The NHS Stop Smoking Quit Kit, ordered online or over the phone, will provide smokers with a range of aids to help them to give up, including a toothbrush [absolutely crucial] and a “health and wealth” wheel to calculate the money saved by ditching their cigarettes.

Some useful statistics from this Times article. Smoking related diseases currently cost the NHS £2.7 billion a year but the government makes £9.9 billion a year from tobacco taxes. This also assumes that 'smoking related diseases' really are due to smoking as the two people I know who died of lung cancer had never smoked - air pollution anybody? The cost of this Stop Smoking Quit Kit is £2 - less than half the cost of a packet of fags in the UK.

Some 44% of smokers will resolve to stop smoking in the new year (is 'resolve' the right word here?) and only 5% will have truly quit by the end of the year. As usual with news articles it isn't clear if this is 5% of 44% - and hence just 2.2% of smokers overall - or 5% of smokers, giving a success rate of 11% of those who vowed to quit.

As usual, the NHS keeps pumping money to the pharmacos for alternative nicotine drug delivery systems, euphemistically and erroneously called nicotine replacement therapies. They don't work because the addiction is not to smoking but to nicotine and the alternative delivery systems suck in terms of buzz. Except that the NHS cannot be seen to support things like electronic cigarettes as this would look like supporting a habit rather than trying to stop it.

If you like receiving freebies in the post, then the new kits are available by calling the NHS Smoking Helpline 0800 0665 826, or visiting the website http://www.nhs.uk/smokefree.