3:39pm Monday 1st February 2010
HEALTH Secretary Andy Burnham has pledged to halve the number of smokers by 2020 as figures showed thousands of people in the South are quitting each year.
Mr Burnham today announced measures which aim to cut the number of smokers from a fifth (21 per cent) of people in England to one in 10 (10 per cent) in the next 10 years.
The target would mean around four million of England's estimated eight million smokers quitting.
The proportion of people who smoke in the South East, at 20%, is slightly lower than the England average, and has fallen from 24% in 1998.
Figures from the NHS Information Centre show that almost 2,400 people in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight quit the habit with help from local health services over a six-month period.
Between April and September last year, the latest period for which figures are available, 2,363 people across the region gave up smoking. They included 1,813 people in the Hampshire primary care trust area, 353 in Southampton and 197 on the Isle of Wight.
The Government has already raised the age of sale for tobacco to 18, forced manufacturers to use striking picture warnings on tobacco packs and banned smoking in pubs and other enclosed work places.
Now Mr Burnham plans to stop the sale of tobacco from vending machines, considered a significant source of tobacco for young people, and is also considering whether to force tobacco companies to sell cigarettes in plain packaging rather than with their own branding.
The minister said: "Ten years ago, millions more people smoked and many have died early as a result. We've come so far and now we'll go even further - to push forward and save even more lives. Today's strategy renews our commitment to virtually eradicate the health harms caused by smoking, and I firmly believe we can halve smoking by 2020. In 10 years' time, only one in 10 people will smoke."
He added: "One day, in the not too distant future, we'll look back and find it hard to remember why anyone ever smoked in the first place."
The Department of Health said 337,000 people stopped smoking last year with the help of free support from the NHS and the number of smokers has fallen by a quarter in the past decade.
In 2007, more than 80,000 deaths and 1.4 million hospital admissions were attributed to smoking and the Department of Health said the habit costs the NHS £2.7bn a year. An estimated 200,000 young people start smoking every year.
Simon Clark, director of the smokers' lobby group Forest, said halving the number of smokers by 2020 would require even more laws and "will further erode our ability to choose how we wish to live our lives".
He said the government has introduced "some of the most draconian anti-smoking laws in the world" and added: "In an allegedly free society, this is nothing to be proud of."
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