Hundreds of people quit smoking with support from Yorkshire Cancer Research

Nearly 700 people in Yorkshire quit smoking last year thanks to services funded by Yorkshire Cancer Research.

The charity is dedicated to reducing the impact of tobacco smoking in the region, where 4,500 people are diagnosed with smoking-related cancers every year¹,².

Smoking causes at least 15 different types of cancer and is the biggest cause of cancer-related death in the region¹,². Every day, 19 people in Yorkshire die from smoking³.

However, pressure on government budgets means funding for local stop smoking services has continued to decline in recent years, with support being scaled down or decommissioned altogether.⁴

The number of people quitting smoking through Yorkshire Cancer Research funded programmes is equivalent to what was generally reported by one local authority in England last year.⁵

Dr Stuart Griffiths, Director of Research at Yorkshire Cancer Research said:

“Helping people in the region quit smoking is vital to saving lives from cancer, because the link between smoking and cancer is undeniable. Quitting smoking is not easy, however. Smoking is addictive, and people often start in childhood, which creates a greater dependence, making it difficult to quit."

Yorkshire Cancer Research is working with NHS Trusts, universities, researchers and councils to test different ways to help people stop smoking, from providing hospital patients with support at their bedsides to embedding stop smoking advice within its lung screening services.

These programmes include the Yorkshire Stop Smoking Study which runs alongside the Leeds Lung Health Check, the QUIT Programme delivered by South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Integrated Care System, and a new service delivered in partnership with Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

The benefits of quitting smoking, including an increase in energy, easier breathing and improved lung function, can be noticed within days and weeks of stopping. After one year, the risk of heart attack halves and after 10 years, the risk of lung cancer falls to half that of someone who smokes.

According to the latest data, Yorkshire has the third highest smoking rate in England, with 14.1% of the population in Yorkshire smoking compared to 13% in England³. Although smoking rates are declining, there are still over half a million (538,733) people in Yorkshire who smoke.

The Government has set an ambition to make England smokefree by 2030, but Yorkshire is due to miss the target by 15 years.

Yorkshire Cancer Research is calling for the Government to make tobacco control a priority. The charity is asking the Government to introduce a fully-funded Tobacco Control Plan and:

1. Raise the minimum age of cigarette sales by one year, every year. In effect, this would ensure a whole generation of children will never be able to buy cigarettes or other tobacco products.
   
2. Invest an extra £125 million every year in smokefree policies, through a ‘polluter pays’ levy to tax the tobacco industry, to provide support to help smokers quit (including £70 million ringfenced for stop-smoking services).
   
3. Require stop smoking services to consistently offer vaping products as a substitute for smoking.
   
4. Prioritise prevention within the NHS, with further action to provide more support to stop people smoking, across the entire NHS.

There is much more that the government can do to tackle smoking, from introducing a tobacco license for retailers to investing in new research and data, including commissioning further research on smoking related health disparities and increasing the number of smokefree places.

Dr Griffiths continued:

“It’s not acceptable that people are still dying from smoking in 2023. As a charity, we are committed to playing our part by funding research trials, services and campaigns to help people quit for good. But it’s now time for the Government to act. There is a great opportunity to protect the health of the whole country and help stop people in Yorkshire and beyond experiencing the devastating impact of cancer.”

1 Incidence and Mortality | Cancer Data

2 Brown, K. F., Rumgay, H., Dunlop, C., Ryan, M., Quartly, F., Cox, A., ... & Parkin, D. M. (2018). The fraction of cancer attributable to modifiable risk factors in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the United Kingdom in 2015. British journal of cancer, 118(8), 1130-1141.

3 Local Tobacco Control Profiles | PHE

4 Public Health Grant (2022) | The Health Foundation

5 Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services in England - April 2021 to March 2022 | NHS