Campaign to help smokers quit wins council praise

A campaign in Sheffield to help people quit, or cut down, smoking has been praised by the council for its success.

Smoke-Free Sheffield, which works alongside 50 partner organisations, was hailed for its efforts to reduce the percentage of smokers in the city to 5% or lower.

In 2023, 10.3% of Sheffield's residents identified as smokers, according to the most recent data from the Office for National Statistics, compared to 17.6% in 2017.

Sheffield City Council's director of public health, Greg Fell, congratulated the campaign on a "good news story" and vowed the work, and funding, would continue: "There's zero chance that we won't be doing comprehensive work on tobacco control in Sheffield."

Sarah Hepworth, the campaign's tobacco-control lead, said Smoke-Free Sheffield wanted to achieve a "smoke-free generation by 2030 across all social groups" - according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

"Smoking affects health, wealth, happiness and opportunities to work, climate change and the wider economy in Sheffield," she said.

She added shifting the focus of campaigns to helping people cut down on smoking, as well as supporting them to stop completely, had had a "tremendous" impact.

However, she said 53,000 adults in Sheffield continued to smoke, and, on average, this group saw their GP a third more frequently than non-smokers.

She highlighted how smokers were more likely to be people struggling with mental health issues or living in deprived areas.

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