SMOKERS from the region who paid a high price for their addiction are fronting a hard-hitting campaign to deter others.

Tony Osborne of Middlesbrough and Maggie Bratton of Newcastle are bravely sharing their stories of the terrible damage caused by smoking as part of a new advertising campaign.

The campaign, by Fresh and supported by Cancer Research UK, shows Mr Osborne of South Bank describing how he was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer when he was 52.

Surgeons at James Cook removed much of the inside of his neck, including his voice box, leaving him with a stoma in his throat.

Mr Osborne, who ditched tobacco for good on the day of his surgery, said: “I knew about lung cancer but I had no idea what was happening to my throat.”

He added: “It was difficult to get used to a new way of breathing through the stoma – the hole in my neck – rather than through my mouth or nose.

“It affects you in so many different ways. My nose doesn’t do anything anymore, I don’t breathe through it and I have no sense of smell.

“I had to learn how to talk again as I now have to press down on the valve on my neck, and in order to talk I have to stop breathing.”

Mrs Bratton, who started smoking as a teenager, says she still gets upset when talking about having cancer and the effect it has had on her life.

She said: “If I had one message to smokers it’d be don’t wait until it’s too late.

“I wish I had stopped smoking sooner, or I wish I had probably never started smoking at all.

“Smoking isn’t worth what I have gone through.”

In the North-East, smoking is estimated to cause over 2,400 new cases of cancer a year and relates to 2,140 deaths annually.

The region’s smoking rates have fallen by 44 per cent since 2005 when almost a third of North East adults smoked. Last year 16.2 per cent of residents were smokers.