Kick the habit – health minister urges smokers to quit

Health Minister Edwin Poots today urged all smokers to “take the leap” and kick the smoking habit today for No Smoking Day 2012.

“Quitting smoking is the single most important thing you can do to improve your health. We know that the majority of the 340,000 smokers in Northern Ireland wish they could stop, but put off doing so waiting for the ‘right’ time. I would encourage all smokers to make No Smoking Day 2012 the date on which they quit smoking for good,” the Minister said.

He continued: “Smoking still kills almost 2,300 people each year in Northern Ireland and thousands more are living with debilitating illnesses as a result of their addiction. This does not have to be the case. With the wide availability of specialist smoking cessation programmes, and provision of Nicotine Replacement Therapy, there has never been a better time to give up smoking.”

There are now over 600 smoking cessation services available across Northern Ireland in a range of settings, including pharmacies, GP surgeries and community centres. These services have helped over 100,000 smokers to set a quit date between 2007/08 and 2010/11.

The Chief Medical Officer, Dr McBride said: “Smoking is an addictive life limiting habit. 24% of the adult population in Northern Ireland smoke, this remains much too high. A key objective of the Department’s recently published ten-year Tobacco Control Strategy is to help smokers to quit and significant funding is being invested to support this. This will help reduce the overall number of smokers. However, if we can prevent our young people from taking the place of those smokers who have either quit or died, then

we will see much further reductions in prevalence rates and achieve our aim of a smoke free society.”

As of March 1 this year, sales of tobacco products have been banned from vending machines and plans to ban the display of tobacco in large shops will be introduced later this year. Northern Ireland will also be part of a UK-wide consultation on the introduction of plain packaging for tobacco products.

Dr McBride added: “Measures aimed at preventing young people from starting to smoke will also support current smokers in their quit attempts by putting cigarettes

more firmly out of sight, and hopefully out of mind.”