The government has been urged to clarify its plans to reduce smoking after speculation a Tobacco Control plan announced in the summer has been dropped.
Earlier this year, Javed Khan published his independent tobacco control review “Making smoking obsolete” and outlined measures to further reduce smoking rates.
The habit costs the North East nearly £888million every year and businesses bear the largest burden with smoking-related lost productivity equating to more than £684million.
Part of the review was a recommendation to impose a levy on tobacco companies out of the £900million annual profits they make in England to help fund prevention rather than costs falling on the taxpayer.
Ailsa Rutter OBE, director of Fresh and Balance, the North East regional alcohol and tobacco control programme, said: “We urgently need clarity now whether it is government policy to tackle our biggest killer or hand a free licence to tobacco companies to peddle addiction for profit.
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“Smoking is one of the biggest pressures on the NHS.
“It is the biggest cause of cancer and it is driving poverty and inequality here in regions like the North-East.
“By ignoring this issue we will add more burden on the NHS and condemn more families and more children to lifelong tobacco addiction which causes death, drains public services and fuels poverty."
Amanda Healy, director of Public Health, County Durham and Chair of Association of Directors of Public Health North East Forum, said: “Despite efforts of tobacco companies to derail efforts to reduce smoking, there has been massive support for these efforts and we have made good progress to reduce smoking rates with the NHS and local communities working together.”
Sue Mountain, 56, from South Tyneside, smoked for much of her life, but in 2012 tests revealed she had laryngeal cancer.
A decade later, she's had the disease three times.
She said: “The fact is that smoking has killed nearly 8million people in the UK in the last 50 years.
"Why do we tolerate this? Why aren’t we doing more to stop people dying?"
Meanwhile the Deputy Prime Minister and Health Secretary, Therese Coffey has come under fire for defending her decision to vote against prohibiting smoking in cars with a child present.
Speaking on LBC radio, the Health Secretary said she voted against the law in 2015 because she ‘didn’t think it was the right thing to do to tell parents how to handle the situation with their children’.
Alex Cunningham, Stockton North MP and Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health, Alex, led the campaign to ban smoking in a car with a child and was successful in pushing the Conservative government to adopt the law in 2015.
At the time, the British Lung Foundation estimated that half a million children were exposed to second hand smoke in a car every week, and 77 per cent of respondents to a YouGov poll, including almost two thirds of smokers were in favour of the ban.
Today, Mr Cunningham said Ms Coffey should ‘hang her head in shame’ over her refusal to support the ban.
He added: “The long-term impacts of smoking on people’s health is well documented and second-hand smoke is known to cause health problems, with so-called “passive smokers” more likely to develop lung and heart disease.
“The banning of smoking in a car with a child was a positive step forward in protecting the health of young people.
“It was a campaign that took me three years to convince the Tory Government to support, so it beggars belief that the Heath Secretary is not only opposed to measures that would keep children safe but was also completely ignorant that such a law existed.
“I’d suggest she takes a refresher course in the legislation she is meant to have responsibility for as she is quite clearly unfit for the role she holds at the moment.”
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