End smoking to free up GP appointments, says CRUK
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 at 9:45 According to Cancer Research, ending smoking in England could free up 75,000 GP appointments each month:
Ahead of next week's spring budget, the UK's largest cancer charity is calling on the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt MP, to reduce pressures on the NHS and provide a boost to the UK economy, by taking swift action on tobacco control.
Measures that should be adopted include a consultation on raising the age of sale of tobacco, as well as more funding to help people quit. If government can’t pay for this, then ministers should introduce a ‘polluter pays’ style charge on the tobacco industry.
Sky News has the story here (Raising legal age of tobacco sales 'could free up 75,000 GP appointments per month', says charity).
It includes the quote I gave the Press Association yesterday:
"It isn't the government's job to end smoking.
“Over the past decade smoking rates have fallen significantly not because of taxpayer-funded anti-smoking campaigns or stop-smoking services, but because millions of smokers have switched to reduced-risk products such as e-cigarettes.
"Government interventions, like plain packaging, have generally had very little impact."
Meanwhile, if you're wondering where the 75,000 figure comes from, the PA has this explanation:
The charity’s analysis is based on GP appointment data and a 2018 study which found that people who do not smoke see their GP 12% less than those who do.
I haven't read the study but if they're suggesting that every smoker who has an appointment with a doctor is there to address some smoking-related issue – well, that's a huge assumption. Smokers have non-smoking related ailments too!
It also ignores the fact that most smoking-related illnesses can be caused by a number of factors so it's ridiculously simplistic to suggest that 'ending smoking' might 'free up' 75,000 GP appointments a month.
But even if it did, should we then forcibly end obesity to free up thousands more GP appointments?
Meanwhile the single largest group of people taking up GPs’ time is almost certainly the elderly. Perhaps we should get rid of them too? Think of all the appointments that would ‘free up’.
My own view, for what's worth, is that because the majority of smokers come from poorer backgrounds it's quite possible that poverty, stress and poor diet are equally if not more responsible for many of those GP appointments.
As ever however it's easier to target smokers, and smoking.
PS. I'll be discussing the CRUK story on GB News later this morning.
Reader Comments (3)
They are just making it up to stigmatise smokers more and incite hatred from the public with a view to pushing the idea that smokers are taking from others.
We pay our way and based on a lifetime of being around smokers, I have never witnessed them visiting their GP more than anyone else.
Hypochondriacs, however, seem to be constantly at the doctor's or sat in A&E and the continual political scaremongering about health on a daily basis about all sorts of things has certainly created more of them over the last few decades.
This attack on smokers who pay far more for their health care than those who do not smoke, is just another wheeze by this political charity which has long lost its way from starting out as altruistic to become nothing more than expert at stigmatising targeted members of the community - usually the most vulnerable in society.
Shame on them and shame on any politician who believes this statistic made up for dramatic effect by this pampered charity to get its own way. Lying should not become acceptable.
As my "day job" requires me to pop in and out of the local GP waiting room every day I can state categorically that most of the regular punters are not smokers.
From my private conversations with the GPs there I'd also add that they regard around 80% of their clientele as timewasters who want pointless pills and refuse to wait the two or three days most minor ailments take to clear up
And finally, most of the smokers I see around a medical facility are the staff puffing away outside the cottage hospital about 100 metres away from the GP surgery.
Manx Gent
I daresay that the smoking staff outside the Cottage Hospital are the ones who really have been following the science.
I have been following the emerging science on Nitric Oxide for some years now. From the benefits to premature babies to the prophylactic effects against Coronavirus.
I found this most helpful
Nitric oxide dosed in short bursts at high concentrations may protect against Covid 19
Abstract
"It has long been suggested that NO may inhibit an early stage in viral replication. Furthermore, in vitro tests have shown that NO inhibits the replication cycle of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. Despite smoking being listed as a risk factor to contract Covid-19, only a low proportion of the smokers suffered from SARS-corona infection in China 2003, and from Covid-19 in China, Europe and the US. We hypothesize, that the intermittent bursts of high NO concentration in cigarette smoke may be a mechanism in protecting against the virus"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1089860320301610