Smoking to end by 2030: a feasible possibility?

Public health initiatives are becoming increasingly common efforts to improve the physical wellbeing of UK citizens. From sugar taxes to advertising restrictions, the public have mostly backed these policies. However, a new goal released last month may the most ambitious yet.

The Advancing Our Health Green Paper set out several aims to make 2020 the ‘decade of proactive, predictive, and personalised prevention’ (Department of Health and Social Care and Cabinet Office, 2019). Yet the most aspirational goal is to make England smoke-free by 2030. The report includes options for raising funds to support smoking cessation, and it also included a new measure to automatically offer smoking cessation services to any smoker who is admitted to hospital.

It is worth noting however that the Green Paper made no commitment to introduce a levy on tobacco companies to pay for stop smoking services – which has been called for by several health groups, including Action on Smoking and Health, for the past few years (Triggle, 2015).