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The Department of Health has published its long-awaited Tobacco Control Plan for England. The plan aims to create a “smokefree generation” by reducing smoking rates through prevention and helping smokers to quit.  While welcoming the plan’s publication and aims, campaigners were quick to point out a lack of clear targets and issues around funding. “Cuts to public health budgets have left local authorities in a very difficult position and struggling to deliver the necessary stop smoking services,” said Alison Cox, Cancer Research UK’s director of prevention. “It is worrying that this was not addressed at all in the plan. “We want to see the government commit to a timeline for getting smokers down to just five per cent of the population, and to ensure every socioeconomic group is targeted to achieve this aim.”  While no date is set, the plan’s ambition is to reduce smoking prevalence to below 5 in 100 people. If this was achieved by 2035, the NHS could save £67million per year, avoiding 97,500 new cases of smoking-related disease, including 35,900 cancers over 20 years.

See original article at: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/cancer-news/news-report/2017-07-20-tobacco-control-plan-for-england-published