BDA: smoking cessation funding should be ringfenced

The British Dental Association (BDA) has called on the government to ensure that budgets for smoking cessation services are ringfenced and protected.

Responding to news that around 40 percent of local councils have dropped their free stop-smoking services due to a need to save money in the face of budgetary cuts, the BDA has expressed concerns about the wider health implications of such a move.

This comes at a time when incidences of mouth cancers are soaring, making it the tenth most common cancer in the UK among men and 15th most common in women.

It was noted that higher smoking rates in men are largely responsible for the greater number of oral cancer cases in men, with an estimated 70 percent of these linked to tobacco smoking.

Russ Ladwa, chair of the BDA's Health and Science Committee, said: "Investing in stop-smoking services ought to be a mandatory rather than an optional service given the high prevalence of oral cancers and their poor mortality rates."

Indeed, mortality rates for oral cancers have increased by around ten percent in the last decade, a period that saw survival rates for many other cancer types improving.