Press Releases

NHS Offers Smokers Help That Does Not Work

The School of Health and Population Sciences at Birmingham University published the results of their research project on the Effectiveness of NRT in the British Medical Journal (BMJ 2009;338:b1024) Those results show that only 1.6 percent of smokers using NRT completely abstain from smoking in the long term. 98.4% fail to give up using NRT products that are promoted and pushed by the NHS.

Every day, thousands of smokers who contact the NHS, or the websites of the main anti-smoking charities will be mislead by being given advice to use nicotine patches, nicotine chewing gum, lozenges or sprays. No mention is made of other smoking cessation therapies with far higher success rates such as hypnotherapy.

A British company that created the world's first online hypnotherapy clinic (www.nosmokingagain.com) with its targeted, low cost, no-cure-no-pay approach has found it difficult to reach smokers, as the NHS, the anti-smoking charities (including ASH and NOSMOKINGDAY) and the NRT product adverts top the Google pages “pushing” NRT as the only route to stop smoking.

Millions of taxpayers’ money are squandered, whilst in effect the pharmaceutical industry has been given licence to "peddle" their packaged nicotine products in competition with the tobacco companies only to maintain people's nicotine addiction.

NoSmokingAgain has written to NICE, the NHS, the charities and Heath Secretary Andy Burnham to ask them to move on from NRT and put hypnotherapy in place, so lives can be saved, which are now being squandered because of totally inadequate stop smoking support.

John Wesdorp, Managing Director of NoSmokingAgain.com claims that 70% of British smokers desperately want to give up because of severe health risks, cost, and the inconvenience of smoking restrictions. As a result of the NHS policy to continue to push NRT, there will be no letup in the large numbers of people who unnecessarily die each year from smoking-related diseases.

The current situation is unacceptable and requires a complete rethink of our support system for smokers ready to give up. Some NHS surgeons, Wesdorp says, have been suggesting that smokers should not be treated as their problems are self inflicted, however, if the NHS gives smokers the wrong advice how to stop, how can we expect them to.


Contact Name: John Wesdorp
Role: Managing Director NoSmokingAgain
Company: NoSmokingAgain
Contact Email: click to reveal e-mail
Contact Phone: 08450099500
Company Website: http://www.nosmokingagain.com

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nhs | health | stop smoking | quit smoking | smoking related diseases | nrt |

Categories:
health / medical / fitness

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