Deadly menace of bootleg cigarettes

Jun 24 2008 by Chris Robinson, The Journal

THE North East is the “number one hotspot” for deadly cigarettes smuggled from abroad, putting lives at risk in some of our poorest communities, health bosses warned.

It comes as leading figures on the stop smoking issue meet to debate the number of services available for those wanting to stub out the habit.

Fresh Smoke Free North East estimates that there are 14,500 smokers aged between 11 and 15 years old in the North East.

And research has shown that children who begin smoking before they turn 16 are three times more likely to die of cancer than some one who starts in their mid-20s.

A regional action plan draft on smuggling will be revealed tomorrow at a conference led by Fresh Smoke Free North East when it meets at Hardwick Hall, Sedgefield, County Durham.

It is one of four events hosted by Fresh to explore the key content of the consultation on the new National Tobacco Strategy.

At a conference yesterday it was revealed that more needed to be done to promote nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and for the producers to halve the price.

Campaigners also urged that NHS Stop Smoking Service needed to become more “user-friendly” to increase the number of people who attended.

Deborah Arnott, director of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) said she wanted marketing changed to help younger people quit. She said smokers should be given access to long term supplies of medicinal nicotine in order to tackle a tobacco habit which will kill one out of every two of them.

Ms Arnott added: “Smokers believe it’s the nicotine that gives them life threatening diseases such as cancer and heart disease, but this is simply not the case. It’s not the nicotine that kills tobacco users but the smoke they inhale.

“Smokers could save their lives by chewing nicotine gum rather than smoking and we want to encourage them to do so. Unfortunately current products are not sufficiently fast-acting, attractive or easy to use to be competitive with cigarettes, so we also need better nicotine products.

Regionwide there are more than 500,000 people who smoke and 5,500 smoke-related deaths in the North East.

Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Unit, said a big threat in lower income groups was the use of hand-rolled tobacco.

Ailsa Rutter, director of Fresh, said: “With the highest smoking rate in England, the North East has the most to gain from a long-term, well-funded and evidence-based tobacco strategy.”