by Isabel Müller Eidhamar, reporter

Residents of Medway are encouraged to stub their cigarettes this October after it was revealed that nearly 7,400 people have died in Kent due to smoking.

The national campaign run by Public Health England, helps support people stop smoking for good through its 28-day-period.

Medway remain the home of the second-highest proportion of smokers in the Southeast, but the effort hopes to stagger the dramatic numbers of smoking-attributed deaths in the region.

Brian, aged 69, from Brompton is one of the council’s success stories. After being diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in 2004, he finally took the step to end his addiction in 2016 following serious warnings from his hospital consultant.

“Being told you could die soon was the worst news imaginable. Once the consultant told me I had to quit, I had no choice,” Brian says.

It was due to the council’s A Better Medway service that Brian finally quit smoking, and last year the service helped more than 1,300 people like Brian stub the habit.

Medway’s Labour Leader, Vince Maple, believes Stoptober is a great initiative to encourage more people to follow Brian’s example:

“Smoking is a very difficult addiction and many of my friends have fought long and hard to try and fight that addiction. It is hard, but sometimes having these big collective national focuses can be very positive,” he says,
“We have a longstanding issue with smoking, there is a problem in our community, there is no other way of putting it frankly.”

Dr Julian Spinks, who is based in Strood, sees a vast variety of serious smoking related illnesses in his practice, but he believes Stoptober could encourage people of Medway to take a more serious look on their health:

“When you talk to smokers, a third is simply not interested in giving up, about a third would give it up if they had some incentive, and there is a third who really want to give it up,” he says, adding that the focus should be one the two-thirds who with a nudge would quit.

“There is an enormous amount of illnesses related to smoking, and although obesity is starting to take over, it is still the case that smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable early death,” Dr Spinks explains.

Smoking in England accounts for more than 80,000 deaths each year, and more than 3,000 hospital admissions in Kent and Medway were attributed to the effects of cigarettes between 2016 and 2017.

Cllr David Brake, Medway Council’s Portfolio Holder covering Public Health has said in a statement:

“We are committed to supporting our residents and encouraging healthier lifestyles and the new digital stop smoking service will be launched later this month. It will provide other ways to help people quit smoking, and at a time which is convenient for them.”

Read more at: https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/for-your-body/quit-smoking/stoptober/