People's History of the NHS

Back

Cigarette Smoking and the NHS

The NHS as the central institution of health care provision in Britain has played an important role in providing information, disseminating health advice and supplying treatment therapies for both smokers and non-smokers since the late 1950s. NHS Hospital care, GP practice and neonatal services have played important roles in informing the public about smoking and its effects on cancer, heart disease, stroke and the unborn infant with national campaigns dedicated to providing information, motivation and support. Yet the recent rise of the e-cigarette and calls to include e-cigarettes on the NHS as another quitting therapy has complicated public health initiatives towards smoking and the health impacts of nicotine addiction itself.
JH

2 thoughts on “Smoking at Work, 1987

  1. I smoked for about 25 years and finally I got tired of it and decided to quit on 4 different occasions finally on the fourth time I took chantix and it helped me tremendously and I did quit. I did tell myself that if there was a stressful moment in my life that I had to continue to not smoke that was my downfall, if there was something stressful in my life I would automaticly pull in to the store and get a pack of cigs and start smoking but, not this time I noticed things that could potently set me off to smoke and that helped me to continue to keep on track and not smoke. It was very hard but now I am into about 5 years of not smoking.

    1. Hi, thanks for sharing this! Well done on quitting, it is incredibly difficult and, as you can see on this gallery, the tools available to help smokers quit have varied and grown a lot even over the last couple of decades! Would you consider signing up for free on our website, so that you can share your story of how you quit smoking at peopleshistorynhs.org/sharestory? It’s really useful for us to think about which historical approaches best helped people, how this changed over time, etc. All the best, Jenny

Should you wish to remove a comment you have made, please contact us

Twitter Feed

The information is provided by us and while we endeavour to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. We only capture and store personal information with the prior consent of users. Any personal information collected as part of the user registration process or the submission of material (including, but not limited to, name, address, e-mail address) will be stored securely, and accessible only to members of the Cultural History of the NHS project team. We will not sell, license or trade your personal information to others. We do not provide your personal information to direct marketing companies or other such organizations. These opinions do not necessarily represent those of Warwick University or the Wellcome Trust.

This site would like to use cookies to track your usage of the site