Despite the many initiatives launched in the last two decades, there is still a long way to go to tackle Britain's big health and lifestyle challenges: alcohol misuse, obesity and smoking. The biggest and worst of these public health challenges remains smoking. Unlike high-fat foods or alcohol, there is no acceptable level of consumption of cigarettes. Smoking kills – it's that simple. Not only does smoking shorten smokers' lives, but it also comes at an enormous cost to the taxpayer. Smoking-related illnesses are estimated to cost the NHS at least £2.7bn a year in England alone.
Today marks the closure of the government's consultation on whether plain packaging of tobacco products should be introduced in the UK. The prospect of standardised cigarette packaging coming into law will inevitably result in a greater focus on the harmful effects associated with smoking and the role that our government can play in helping people to kick the habit.
The medical evidence is startlingly clear; smoking is the single biggest preventable cause of early death and illness in the UK, each year directly accounting for more than 100,000 unnecessary deaths. One in two long-term smokers will die prematurely from a smoking related disease. We also know that smoking harms others through passive smoking in the home, and smoking by pregnant women also remains a significant problem. More than one in six mothers smoke during pregnancy, with potentially harmful results for both mum and baby.
Smoking also comes at a large financial cost, and often to those who can least afford it. The average price for a packet of cigarettes translates to £51.80 a week for a 20-a-day habit. We know that smoking rates are highest among those on the lowest incomes, further entrenching the health inequalities that exist between the richest and poorest people in our country.
So how do we change things? We must discourage young people from taking up smoking in the first place. While there are fewer older adult smokers than there were a decade ago, smoking is still common among young people, and in particular amongst teenage girls.
The triumph of Britain's athletes at the London Olympic Games has provided a once in a generation opportunity to inspire people to do more exercise and to address some of the toughest public health challenges we face as a country, but it is unlikely that sporting inspiration and the Olympic legacy alone will be enough. One of the most overlooked and potentially most successful aspects of the coalition government's recent NHS reforms was the allocation of much of the public health budget and the responsibility for public health and wellbeing to local councils. Given that there is a clear and pressing need to do more to encourage young people not to smoke, and that local councils also have a responsibility for education, there is now a real potential for properly targeted and co-ordinated public health and lifestyle interventions in our schools, building not only on Britain's Olympic success but also looking to the longer-term.
But we need to go further than education. Studies show that it is young people who are also more likely to be seduced by the marketing techniques of the tobacco companies, which include the way in which cigarette packets are branded and packaged to increase their appeal. The government needs to review all of the available evidence about the effectiveness of such a measure before going ahead with a plain packaging policy, but introducing plain packaging for cigarettes could certainly help to reduce the brand marketing appeal of cigarettes to teenagers, and most importantly, help to stop young people from developing a smoking habit that can only shorten their lives.