Apparently – according to the ONS, so you can take that with a pinch of the proverbial – most smokers want to quit.
Most smokers want to give up but simply find it hard to even go a day without lighting up, research shows.
The Office for National Statistics report, based on a survey of more than 13,000 people, found 63% of smokers in Britain wanted to quit.
But over half of them find it difficult to go a whole day without smoking.
From around 1970 to 1990 the amount of people who smoke fell from around half of the population to around a fifth. Those that continue to do so are “hard core” who are “resistant to traditional messages”. To which my own thinking is; so what? Their business not mine. Of course, one has to bear in mind that I could drop dead any time soon from the evil secondhand smoke that Mrs L leaves around the place, so I probably won’t be thinking it for too long now.
It is, I suspect, fair to say that the decline in smoking was due to people being concerned about the health aspects. My own disinclination to smoke was, frankly no more mysterious than; I had no interest in it. Never even wanted to try. Health wasn’t a consideration, just as it wasn’t a consideration with alcohol or narcotics, neither of which I partake (although I did experiment with alcohol in my late teens).
However, since that decline, the figures have remained pretty static for the past two decades, which is frustrating for the anti-smoking brigade who are anxious to get on with the business of harassing drinkers and salad dodgers. If only those smokers would just get the message, what?
The response in recent years has been to use legislation to discourage smoking, through smoking bans and introducing warning labels on packets.
And despite this, those hard core folk remain resistant to the message. Bummer, eh? You would have thought that the temperance puritans would have got the message that is coming back to them loud and clear; leave us alone. It seems, though, that they are as resistant to traditional messages as the target of their ire.
The coalition government is expected to outline new measures in its forthcoming tobacco control strategy, which will be published later this month.
One of the proposals under consideration is plain packaging.
Martin Dockrell, of the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health, said: “We need to think of smokers as people wanting to leave a room. We have to give them as many ways out as we can. That means making sure there are smoking cessation services available, tackling marketing and making it less affordable.”
And we can expect this to be as effective as the previous attempts. In the meantime, white van man will be busy nipping across to Calais and ASH will be scratching their collective heads wondering why the amount of smokers remains stubbornly at about a fifth of the population. Why aren’t they getting the message? That they are and choose to ignore it seems beyond the angry Arnotts.
Just out of interest and puzzlement: why “amount” of smokers? And not “number” ?
Are they weighing them now and not counting them?
agree with all you say. The persecution of smokers at the behest of the work-shy buggers with too much time on their hands in the government owned “charity” ASH is a stain on any so called free country. Good post Sir.
“We need to think of smokers as people wanting to leave a room”?!
Yes, any room that YOU happen to be in Dockrell, you twat!
I’ll be leaving that room with the smokers.
When I used to smoke, having been introduced to fags at age 11 by my mother (father working away LOL)I smoked because I enjoyed it (pie, small cigars and Turkish fags et al plus Number 6 at school). ENJOYED it. Was pleasurable. These neopuritans should just sod off.
I gave up because I was outgunned by my wife and daughters and succumbed to emotional black mail about me dying eraly and such if I continued. Mind you, I’m thinking about a small cigar tomorrow, on No Smoking day.
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The laws of this land are so considerate that they even demand our smoking shelter at work has certain walls removed. I see now standing at a station platform completely in the open air a no-smoking sign. I comment to my friends that this is a bit odd. They think not. They don’t smoke and it doesn’t affect them so they don’t care. I read in NY you can’t smoke outside in some areas. I slowly have a realisation that this is the way the world works now. F**k everyone else. Its no good defending other peoples rights and freedoms because when it comes to the crunch they don’t give a toss about you.