Could the death toll have been lowered by offering nicotine replacement therapy on the NHS earlier?
In 1996, 28 per cent of UK adults smoked. The decline of smoking had started to level out since the early 1980s and it looked as though the habit was here to stay. Cigarettes were responsible for 120,000 deaths a year through smoking-related illness at an estimated cost to the health service of £1.7bn each year. When Labour came to power in 1997, a stated health policy goal was to tackle smoking. In 1998 the white paper Smoking Kills summarised the evidence in favour of a national stop smoking policy and set out a raft of measures aimed at reducing the damage done by the habit. The government pledged £100m over three years to fund specialist stop smoking services on the NHS. These were to be set up by health authorities and health boards in line with local needs, with a particular focus on deprived areas. Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre at University College London, helped develop the stop smoking framework t
