A scheme that pays pregnant women to stop smoking has been described as bribery by critics.
Women who manage to quit smoking during pregnancy are being rewarded with £400 in a publicly funded scheme that could be rolled out across the country.
One in five pregnant smokers recruited in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde was able to quit after being offered financial incentives.
Some 600 women took part in the pilot scheme, which cost £750,000 and was co-funded by the NHS and the Scottish Government, along with research grants.
But critics have labelled it "dubious", claiming it is essentially bribing women to change their behaviour.
Eben Wilson of the Taxpayer Scotland campaign group said: "The ethics of essentially bribing people to change behaviour on the basis of paying them to be responsible about their own health seems dubious at best - free money is not the answer to bad lifestyle choices."
Professor Linda Bauld of Stirling University, who ran the scheme, said the payments would lead to massive healthcare savings down the line, adding: "Even if you paid the women double, it would be cost-effective in the long-run, saving the NHS money."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article