Free Nicotine Patches For Smokers

Since the smoking ban last year and the increase in the legal age to buy tobacco, Cignificant, Norfolk’s stop smoking service, has seen an increase of 10 – 15% in smokers wanting to quit.

This year, Norfolk’s Primary Care Trust (PCT) has set itself a huge target of helping 4,032 smokers to quit using their budget of £450,000.  To date, it has already achieved over half of that.

Their efforts include offering free nicotine patches to anyone who wants them.  Smokers can get in touch with the stop smoking advisors at the PCT and they will be given a voucher, worth around £16, to redeem at nearby pharmacies.  The vouchers will be given to smokers until 6th February 2008.

Advisors say if the voucher scheme proves successful, then they may run a similar scheme again in the future.

When the smoking ban was put in place, Norwich showed the largest increase in stop smoking book sales with a massive increase of 494%.  The national average was an increase of 257%.  The two most popular books in Norwich were books by Allen Carr and hypnotherapist Paul McKenna.  This was the same across the nation, as reported in our article Cigarette Ban Increases Hypnosis Book Sales.