No Smoking Day - an unholy alliance

I’m not sure this is even worth writing about but today is No Smoking Day.

Truth is, unless you work in public health or tobacco control you’re unlikely to be aware of this increasingly invisible and irrelevant event.

In its heyday 20-25 years ago No Smoking Day was headline news and it was one of the busiest days of the year for Forest.

Even a few years ago we'd be invited to do a handful of local radio interviews. Today, nothing.

There has been some regional coverage – 'East Riding smokers urged to quit', 'People in Lichfield and Burntwood urged to seek support to help quit smoking' and 'Smokers in Highlands urged to quit on No Smoking Day' in the wonderfully named John O'Groat Journal – but it's minor league stuff.

What interests me more is who is actually responsible for the promotion of No Smoking Day 2022 because ever since it was wound up as an organisation in its own right (with a full-time director and an annual budget of £600,000) it's been passed round like a lukewarm potato.

For several years the British Heart Foundation took responsibility for the event and even now the nosmokingday.org.uk URL diverts to the BHF website which is curious because the BHF gave up responsibility for No Smoking Day four or five years ago.

According to ASH the 2021 No Smoking Day communications toolkit was 'developed collaboratively between ASH and Breathe 2025 with support from PHE Marketing, GM Health and Social Care Partnership and Fresh Smokefree North East.

This year we received two emails telling us that the 2022 No Smoking Day Communications Toolkit was available ‘from Smokefree Action’. However there is no mention of No Smoking Day on the Smoke Free Action website.

Instead interested parties were directed to a website called Today Is The Day which has been around since 2019 at least when it was first adopted for No Smoking Day. (See also ‘Today is the Day to Quit for Covid‘.)

Nevertheless, according to the emails (whose provenance I will come to shortly):

Smokefree Action is asking everyone this year to focus on the message that smokers shouldn’t give up on giving up and every time they quit smoking, they’re a step closer to success. Smokefree Action is doing this with the voice of health professionals from around the country. In the toolkit, among other resources, you will find links to short videos from healthcare professionals from different disciplines telling smokers about the importance of quitting and how they can do it successfully. 

Meanwhile a link to another resource - a template press release - takes visitors straight to the ASH website which shouldn’t surprise anyone because not only does the Smoke Free Action Coalition share the same address as ASH, for media enquiries about the Coalition journalists are invited to email press@ash.org.uk.

However the emails that advised us where we could get the 'New Communications Toolkit' for No Smoking Day came not from ASH or even Smoke Free Action but from the Department of Health and Social Care or, more specifically, the PHE Partnerships marketing team.

How do I know? Well, at the bottom of each email the mailing address was given as ‘Department of Health and Social Care, 39 Victoria St, London’.

The small print also informed sharp-eyed readers that:

The reforms to the public health system announced in March became fully operational on 1st October.

Public Health England has transferred all of its health protection functions into the UK Health Security Agency and health improvement/healthcare public health functions into the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, NHSE/I and NHS Digital.

The PHE Partnerships Marketing team has become part of the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, with a new name – Behavioural Programmes Partnerships. The same team is behind the new name and we’ll continue to provide everything you need to deliver our award-winning marketing campaigns on a local level.

In other words, No Smoking Day is now being promoted by a loose partnership that seems to include the DHSC, PHE Marketing (now Behavioural Programmes Partnerships), ASH and the ASH-run Smoke Free Action Coalition.

This unholy alliance won’t come as a surprise to readers but if you need further proof of the remarkably close relationship ASH enjoys with government (the DHSC in particular) and government bodies, feel free to add this information to the growing file of evidence.