Help them lead smoke-free lives

Consuming too much sugar and saturated fat plus our stressed-out, sedentary lifestyles – these are some of the biggest threats to a long and healthy life in modern Britain. But whereas coordinated action on sugar is a (relatively) recent phenomenon, smoking has been the number one enemy to public health for decades. Despite a ban on smoking in public places since 2007 and the rise of e-cigarettes, nearly one in five adults in England still smoke.¹ We can counter this with a 30% fall in the number of smokers overall throughout the last 20 years, but we must also factor in huge discrepancies among certain demographics. Those living in deprived areas are far less likely to quit, for example, and the number of people with mental health problems who smoke has remained fairly static.