A Call to Action: Successful Tobacco Control for the Future

About the Conference

Smoking is the greatest cause of preventable death and illness in the United Kingdom and whilst smoking prevalence rates in the UK have been declining over the last 30 years, the prevalence rates still remain unacceptably high.

Other places in the world such as Sweden, Australia and California have already reduced their smoking prevalence rates to well below 20%.

So what are we doing in the United Kingdom to achieve this optimum prevalence rate?

At a time when all of the UK has implemented bans on smoking in public places there is a danger that many will believe the job of curtailing tobacco use has been done.

Working as we currently are will not bring about rapid declines in tobacco use.

A Call to Action is a tobacco control conference that asks what is required for the UK to achieve markedly reduced prevalence rates and what are the changes we need to implement now to achieve them?

Key questions at the conference will include:

• How can we work together to reduce the smoking prevalence rates in the UK?
• What can we do to improve our health prevention communications to all sectors of our society?
• How do we challenge the normalcy of smoking and achieve cultural change?
• What improvements are required to ensure effective delivery of comprehensive cessation services?
• What are the implications for pharmaceutical products?
• What can we do to prevent young people from starting to smoke?
• What can we do to reduce smuggling of cigarettes into the UK?
• What are the policy and legislative tools that can reduce prevalence rates?

Conference participants will have the opportunity to learn from the successes and challenges faced by successful tobacco control practitioners from Australia, Sweden and California.

This conference will challenge how we work now and into the future. It will send out a clear call to action to all practitioners, policy makers and politicians that we must do more than implement bans on smoking in public places. Indeed, we must do much, much more.