BDA calls for smoking cessation funding to be ring fenced
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- Published: Thursday, 28 January 2016 07:42
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The BDA says it is dismayed to learn that around 40 per cent of local councils have dropped their free stop-smoking services when incidences of mouth cancers are soaring. The chair of the BDA’s Health and Science Committee, Russ Ladwa, said: “Investing in stop-smoking services ought to be a mandatory rather than an optional service given the high prevalence of oral cancers and their poor mortality rates.”
A survey of tobacco control leads by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) also reveals that existing smoking-cessation services are now in doubt as local councils’ brace themselves for annual cuts to their public health budget of 3.9 per cent over the next five years. The ASH survey, published this week, also highlighted that these cuts are in addition to the £200 million announced in last year’s Budget.
The BDA is concerned because higher smoking rates in men are largely responsible for the greater number of oral cancer cases in men, and an estimated 70 per cent of these are linked to tobacco smoking. Survival rates for many cancers are improving, but not for oral cancers where mortality rates have increased by around 10 per cent in the last decade. Cancer Research UK also notes that 2,100 people died of oral cancer in 2012 in the UK - around six people every day.
The Westminster government claimed that preventing ill health and early deaths was at the heart of its decision to transfer responsibility for public health services to local government in 2013, but slashing local councils’ public health budgets means that services which are not mandatory, such as support for smokers who want to quit, are under threat. As smoking accounts for nearly two-thirds of all oral cancers, the BDA believes that funding for smoking cessation programmes should be ring fenced rather than being at the mercy of cuts imposed by central government.
Russ Ladwa said: “It’s a sad fact that more people now die from mouth cancer than from cervical and testicular cancer combined. However, by contrast to the services in place to prevent cervical cancer, services for preventing oral cancers seem to be an afterthought. They are patchy at best, and now seem destined for the chop by nearly half of all local authorities. We know that smoking is the cause of the majority of oral cancers and it is an avoidable risk, so the last thing we should be doing is withdrawing services from people who want help to quit. Investing in stop-smoking services ought to be a mandatory rather than an optional service given the high prevalence of oral cancers and their poor mortality rates.”
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