Government launches anti-smoking campaign

The Department of Health as announced that the government is to launch an anti-smoking campaign in the new year, encompassing television adverts, billboards, and online campaigning.

In the Hook campaign, smokers are being depicted as being aggressively grabbed by a fishing-hook and forced to places where they usually smoke, in order to illustrate the addictive nature of smoking.

Caroline Flint, public health minister, said: “We know that many smokers will be considering stopping smoking in January as part of their New Year resolution and in advanced of the smokefree legislation being implemented on July 1st 2007.”

She added that smokers in Britain smoke an average of 5,100 cigarettes a year, which equates to 14 per day, with 106,000 people dying due to smoking-related illnesses each year.

The department has stated that the campaign intents to help encourage smokers to give up the habit and to make people aware of the free support services available for smokers through the National Health Service.

At the start of December, the government announced that smoking would be banned in all enclosed workplaces and public spaces from July 1st 2007, legislation designed to protect non-smokers from the harm of second-hand smoke and better support smokers who seek to give up when socialising.