SMOKERS are to be offered a cash incentive of £50 a month to quit the habit, it was revealed yesterday.
NHS Tayside, in a jointly funded pilot scheme with the Scottish Government, is planning to spend £500,000 over the next two years in a bid to persuade almost 1,000 smokers in Dundee to kick their nicotine addiction.
And health specialists claimed
yesterday that, compared to the costs of treating smokers for smoking-related diseases, it would be money well spent.
Under the scheme, which follows a successful small-scale pilot project involving expectant mothers in the city's deprived housing schemes, adult smokers who quit will be given a £12.50 a week cash incentive which will be credited on to an electronic card, which they will be able to redeem in their local supermarket for fresh food and groceries, but not alcohol and cigarettes.
The incentive will be available for a maximum of three months. Former smokers taking part in the scheme will have to pass weekly carbon monoxide breath tests at their local pharmacy to show they are still smoke-free.
If successful, the scheme is expected to be rolled out across the rest of Scotland. Paul Ballard, the deputy director of public health with NHS Tayside, said: "After Glasgow, Dundee probably has proportionately the biggest smoking problem in Scotland. And, although current smoking cessation services are working well, because of the complexities of poverty and health, we know we need to do more to tackle this.
"We will approach or encourage a total of 18,000 people in the city to quit. We are expecting 1,800 of them to join the scheme and we hope that 50 per cent of them will actually quit."
The project, he insisted, represented value for money for the health service. "It is going to cost around £1,200 per person, but when you compare that to the cost of treating them for smoking related diseases, then it's a drop in the ocean," he said.
But Neil Rafferty, a spokesman for the pro-smoking lobby group Forest, condemned the scheme as a "waste of public money. There is nothing wrong with the Government encouraging people to quit smoking," he said.
"What we object to is first of all when people are forced to stop or being bribed in this way.
"I would imagine that a lot of non-smokers are going to be pretty annoyed to find that their tax money is being used to help smokers quit.
"Smoking is a choice that adults should be allowed to make. And the decision to quit should be a choice that they should be allowed to make as well."
PROFILE DAWN Young, whose son Andrew is nine months old, was one of the expectant mothers in Dundee who took part in the smoking cessation scheme.
She and her partner Michael Diamond, 35, both kicked the nicotine habit to give Andrew the best start in life. Ms Young, 30, was given £12.50 to spend on groceries from her local Asda store as a reward.
She explained that taking part in the scheme had been easy – it had involved making weekly trips to her local chemist in Albert Street to confirm that she was remaining smoke-free.
"The only time I found it difficult was when I gave birth," she said. "I couldn't go in that week, but they let me off."
Ms Young, who started smoking when she was 15, now imposes a total ban on smoking in her home for the sake of her son's health.
Mr Diamond also praised the scheme. He said: "I would recommend that both parents stop at the same time, not only for their own health, but for the sake of their child's health."
Anyone interested in the scheme should contact Tayside Smoking Helpline on 0845 600 9996.
The full article contains 650 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
