Giving up smoking is no longer one of the most popular New Year resolutions, suggesting that the quarter of the population still puffing away are hooked on the habit.
Giving up smoking is no longer one of the most popular New Year resolutions, suggesting that the quarter of the population still puffing away are hooked on the habit.
Yet the figures for smoking in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board area give a different indication. It still has the highest proportion of smokers in the country - 30% compared with an overall rate of 25% - but the rate varies widely, from 18.6% in East Dunbartonshire to 52% in Barlanark and Easterhouse. We do not know how many of these want to give up, or exactly what proportion form what Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) describe as "a defiant hardcore". What we do know is that 29% of deaths are caused by smoking, and that the high rate of early deaths in the Greater Glasgow area is related to the high proportion of smokers.
Bringing together all the programmes designed to help people stop is likely to make it simpler to access them. Making Smokefree Services available to everyone, whether they pop into their local pharmacy or attend an ante-natal clinic, is an important step forward, but it may still not be enough. The ban on smoking in public places prompted many people to give up, and made it easier for them to not start again.
Yet the fact that for every smoker in Bearsden there will be three in Barlanark suggests that the health message is loud and clear in the more affIuent areas but has failed to reach the poorer parts in a meaningful way.
For smoking cessation services to be truly effective, they must also be targeted in places where the highest proportion of people smoke. Smoking is more acceptable in a culture where it is common and in some of Scotland's most deprived areas it is at the level experienced across the country as a whole 40 years ago, with a similar fatalism as to its effects. "You've got to die of something" is a common attitude.
The key to quitting successfully is motivation; not only understanding the effect of smoking on diseases such as asthma and cancer, but embracing a positive idea of good health. Average life expectancy for males in Glasgow has only recently crept over 70; according to the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, one-fifth of the city's population is likely to die before 65. To bring those figures into line with general expectations for a developed country in the 21st century, it is vital to prevent young people from following the bad example of their parents. It is excellent news that Smokefree Services will visit both primary and secondary schools, because don't start smoking would be the best New Year's resolution of all.
