A Call to Action: Successful Tobacco Control for the Future

Conference Speakers

Deborah Arnott

Deborah Arnott is the Director of Action on Smoking and Health in England – a public health charity which has a strong reputation as one of the most effective campaigning charities in the UK and is at the forefront of the fight to protect people from the harmful effects of tobacco. Most recently it led the campaign that resulted in an overwhelming vote in Parliament for comprehensive smokefree legislation and also played a leading role in ensuring that the Government kept its commitment to ban tobacco advertising. She is a member of the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Advisory Group and of the Programme Development Group for the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) public health programme guidance on the best provision of smoking cessation services.

Speakers abstract - Harm reduction: The Way Forward?

Problem: Current strategies have had little impact in reducing smoking rates among the most disadvantaged, most heavily addicted smokers. The term of "Harm Reduction" causes concern among many in tobacco control, reducing the opportunities to develop new strategies other than those aimed a immediate and permanent cessation.

Position: While tobacco remains a legal product, all tobacco control is, of necessity based on a philosophy of harm reduction. Unable to take the product off the market, we try to control the levers the tobacco industry use to promote it, to reduce the harm it causes. These levers are known as the "marketing mix" or the '4 Ps', product, price, promotion and place. We also use the same levers to promote the alternative, quitting. We note that the Department of Health in England has committed to consult on a new tobacco control strategy. We will outline measures that can be included in such a strategy which will push the decline in smoking prevalence faster and further. Further, additional approaches are outlined based on harm reduction which seek to use medicinal nicotine to serve more effectively the most heavily addicted smokers.

Proposition: Tobacco control advocates across the UK need to speak to government with a clear and united voice: Current strategies need to be maintained and continued and they must be reinforced by additional measures geared to reduce the harm to the most disadvantaged members of our society.