70% of smokers in Scotland want to quit yet until recently there were few effective support services in place to help them. The White Paper on tobacco, Smoking Kills, outlined a national smoking cessation policy for Scotland, providing local services and the provision of stop smoking aids such as Zyban and Nicotine Replacement Therapy. The NHS in Scotland spends an estimated £140 million on hospital treatment for diseases caused by smoking. Helping smokers to quit is a highly cost effective public health measure. ASH Scotland believes all proven treatments which help smokers to quit should be freely available on the NHS in Scotland.
The UK White Paper on tobacco, Smoking Kills, has a section on cessation.