Shropshire Star comment: Smokers must step up to plate
The money spent by the NHS on anti-smoking programmes ought not to be viewed as wasted, even though success rates are poor.
For while more than half remain addicted to nicotine at the end of treatment, the NHS will most probably make considerable savings from those who kick the habit.
They will have fewer cancer treatments to administer, beds to provide and consultants whose skills are required. In truth, the Stop Smoking Service has a tough job.
Smokers are notoriously reluctant to stop and by definition are addicts to nicotine. Sadly, many are unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions, refusing to give up despite overwhelming evidence that they should.
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It is a question of responsibility. Smokers should not depend on the NHS to get them out of trouble, they should do so themselves. They have a wider responsibility to their loved ones, their friends and family, and smoking is incompatible with a healthy lifestyle in the modern idiom.
The powerful tobacco lobby has lost the argument and the Government should be applauded for making it harder and harder for people to smoke.
A ban on advertising, restrictions on points of sale and graphic health campaigns all serve to hammer home the irrefutable fact that smoking kills. We are moving towards a society where smoking is increasingly rare.
The Government seeks to save some people from themselves. It has had good results on other campaigns, notably bringing about a cultural shift on the issue of drink-driving and turning what was once socially acceptable into a taboo. Its work on drug-driving and the prevention of mobile phone-driving is achieving similar ends.
In the final analysis, however, individuals must step up to the plate. They cannot and should not use spurious arguments about freedom of choice.
Smoking is an anti-social pastime that harms us all. It causes disease among those forced to smoke passively. It causes litter and the deterioration of personal effects and property. It is an unnecessary and unacceptable fire risk.
The NHS spends millions on cancer treatments. And yet so much time, money and heartache could be saved if people were simply big enough and strong enough to just say no.
