Millions of people have used NHS Smokefree online support to help them stop smoking. Choose from an app, email, SMS and face-to-face guidance.
Why quitting smoking is the best choice
Smoking damages your body in many ways. From the day-to-day effects on your heart and your breathing, to longer-term smoking-related diseases such as heart disease, cancer and stroke. Your smoke can harm your family’s health, too. Children from a smoke-free home are less likely to have persistent coughs, and middle ear infections. They are also less likely to be admitted to hospital due to asthma and chest infections that can be made worse by second-hand smoke. If you smoke, quitting is one of the best things you’ll ever do for your health.
E-cigarettes
Although not risk-free, e-cigarette use is around 95% safer than smoking, based on current evidence.
E-cigarettes allow delivery of nicotine without the harmful additional chemicals produced by tobacco smoking, such as tar and carbon monoxide, that are responsible for damage to health. E-cigarettes may be used as an aid to quitting smoking, and may be at least as effective as licensed medications such as Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT).
You’ll find more information about e-cigarettes on the Smokefree website.
Stop smoking during pregnancy
The Smokefree website has a smoking in pregnancy challenge group to help you go smoke free in pregnancy.
Stop smoking for 28 days and you’re 5 times more likely to quit for good
Public Health England has a great deal of support to help people stop smoking.
The 28-day stop smoking campaign has driven over 1 million quit attempts to date and is the biggest mass quit attempt in the country. It is based on research that shows that if you can stop smoking for 28-days, you’re five times more likely to stay smoke-free for good.
There are many ways to quit including switching to e-cigarettes, using nicotine replacement therapies such as patches and gum, or by getting face-to-face support from a local stop smoking service. You may choose one method, or several but there will be a way that’s right for you.
Quit smoking to improve outcomes after routine surgery
Stopping smoking before an operation reduces the risk of serious complications, improves healing time, decreases the time you will be in hospital after the operation and means you are less likely to be admitted to intensive care. You can reduce your level of risk if you stop smoking as early as possible before your operation.
Smokefree
The Breathe 2025 vision is to see the next generation of children born and raised in a place free from tobacco, where smoking is unusual.
Nearly all smokers start young and in Kirklees. We know that two in three smokers started before the age of 18. This means that preventing children and young people from starting smoking is the only way to reduce the number of people who smoke.
A number of factors contribute to children and young people taking up smoking. These include:
- peer and adolescent smoking
- seeing smoking in the media
- the smoking status of parents
Children tend to adopt behaviour they see as normal and being around other smokers increases the likelihood that a youth will also smoke.
Kirklees is part of a region wide vision to create a smokefree generation by 2025. Everyone can do their bit to support. Please visit the Breathe 2025 website to find out more.