With 280 children starting to smoke every day in the UK, here’s what your local NHS Trust is doing on World No Tobacco Day

The UK government recently changed the law on menthol cigarettes along with other flavourings due to as many as 280 children beginning to smoke in the UK every single day.

In line with such figures, the East Riding Stop Smoking Service has been building a roadmap to a Smokefree region by 2022. By doing this, over 600 people each year in the East Riding could avoid the fate of a premature death due to smoking. It is therefore important that action is taken for people to support this campaign and make this ambition a reality.

The Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust’s YOURhealth Service is currently leading the East Riding Smokefree Generation campaign, which aims to provide everyone with the opportunity to successfully stop smoking with our free support, guidance and Nicotine Replacement Therapy. By doing so, the service believes we could have a Smokefree East Riding by as soon as 2022!

Here in the East Riding, we have seen some amazing results over recent years with the number of smokers reducing vastly. However, YOURhealth claim that:

“We are not one to rest on our laurels and know there is still a lot of work to do to support the remaining 30,000 people living in the East Riding to give up the habit for good.”

“We know since COVID reached the East Riding there has been an increase in the number of people concerned about the impact smoking could have on them if they were to be diagnosed with COVID-19 which has resulted in over 100 referrals to the local Stop Smoking service within a week.”

World No Tobacco Day, hosted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is on Sunday 31^st May this year and the theme is protecting young people from industry manipulation and preventing them from nicotine and tobacco use. This is a great opportunity to promote health, with the aim to reduce the number of smokers in the UK and deter young people from picking up the habit.

Smoking is incredibly harmful, killing over 8 million people every year and is responsible for 25% of all cancer deaths globally. The tobacco industry today knows that, for every death, a new smoker needs to be found to ensure they maintain their multi-billion pound business.

As highlighted in this year’s campaign, Tobacco companies bombard children and adolescents with social media messages that were viewed over 25 billion times. This kind of social media reach can result in children and adolescents being tempted to use E-cigarettes and therefore at least doubles their chances of smoking cigarettes later in life. Not only this, but E-cigarette use increases your risk of heart disease and lung disorders and nicotine in e-cigarettes is a highly addictive drug and can damage a child’s brain development.

The Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust’s local campaign supports the key messages the World Health Organisation are sharing this World No Tobacco Day and want to do all they can to help young people from the temptations of smoking.

Smoking killed 78,000 people in England last year, leaving thousands more with serious illness and costing society £12.5bn.

You can now support the campaign by signing the pledge here. By signing up, you are demonstrating the importance of our local efforts, over 750 individuals and organisations have already shown their support by signing the pledge; please share the link with your colleagues and networks to help us grow this number even further.