British smokers thinking of quitting have a reason to celebrate this New Year. Free nicotine patches are to be offered on the NHS as part of a major drive to help smokers quit. The Department of Health has announced that smokers would be given coupons for a week’s free trial of the patches in the “Quit kits”. The patches included in the kit will be either NiQuitin Clear 21mg patches or Nicotinell TTS 30 21mg/24 hour patches, Step 1.
The kits would also contain items such as calming audio downloads and “health and wealth” wheels showing the benefits of giving up, will be available at participating pharmacies across the country. From January 1, the kits will be at Co-operative and Whitworth pharmacies and later at Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Manichem pharmacies, followed by Superdrug and a range of independent pharmacies in February and March. They will also be available online. The Department of Health has ordered 300,000 of the kits and has an option to buy an extra 105,000 if demand is high. The government and kit suppliers Novartis and GSK had concluded that a week’s free supply was “a very good basis upon which smokers get started.”
The patches known as Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) serve by gradually releasing nicotine into the bloodstream without the cancer-causing substances found in cigarettes. With use of NRTs at least two-thirds of smokers want to quit. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said, “January is the most popular time of year to try and quit smoking. To give smokers some extra help, we’ve launched a new Quit Kit with a free one-week trial of NRT patches… Smoking costs the NHS billions every year and can cost a 20-a-day smoker around £2,000 a year, so giving smokers help to quit not only improves their health, but saves them and the NHS money.”
According to Professor Robert West, from the Health Behaviour Research Centre at University College London, “Every year 80,000 people still die from smoking. Quitting smoking can be tough but by using stop smoking medication such as NRT patches and getting NHS support can significantly improve smokers’ chances of quitting for good.” Deborah Arnott from Action on Smoking and Health however said, “What worries me is that many smokers who could benefit from this may not find out about it…The advertising campaigns, which have been so important in the past in getting smokers to take up these sorts of offers and to go to smoking cessation services are not being run any more as they have been cancelled by the government.”
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