NE Tobacco Commissioners
A North East Local Authority and Office of Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) Tobacco Commissioners network that provides an opportunity for shared and improved practice in relation to tobacco control and making smoking history.
NE Tobacco Commissioners Network
A North East Local Authority Tobacco Commissioners network, with specialist support from the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities (OHID). The network provides an opportunity to share and improve practice in relation to stop smoking support, as a component of wider tobacco control activity and our shared ambition to make smoking history.
Smoking tobacco will kill up to 2 out of 3 long term users. Tobacco remains the single biggest cause of preventable illness and death with approximately 4,300 people in the North East dying each year from smoking. Recent figures from Cancer Research UK indicate one person dies every 2 hours from smoking related conditions and it’s estimated it’s responsible for around 3,100 cancer deaths each year. That’s a third (33%) of all cancer deaths in the region.
Fresh: Making smoking history together
Local Authorities across the North East are working in partnership with the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (NENC ICB) to commission ‘Fresh’ the UK’s first dedicated regional tobacco control programme, set up in the North East in 2005 to address (then) the worst rate of smoking-related illness and death in England.
Smoking rates in the North East have more than halved, from 29% of adults smoking in 2005 to 13.1% of adults smoking in 2022. However, approximately 313,000 NE adults still smoke, and the latest evidence shows that up to two in every three long-term smokers are killed by tobacco.
Tobacco control has a strong and established evidence base that goes back several decades. The first major report on how to address smoking was Smoking and Health, by the Royal College of Physicians in 1962.
The best use of efforts at the population level is to focus on adult smokers, to raise motivation to quit and offer support, and in doing so to change the world our children grow up in.
We are never anti-smoker and recognise that smoking is an addiction that nearly always starts in childhood and smokers need support and encouragement to quit.
New resources on vaping to support schools, colleges, parents and carers
We’re pleased to share with you a suite of new resources to support schools, colleges, parents and carers across the North East on the facts around vaping within the context of reducing the harms from tobacco. The resources were originally developed by Smokefree Sheffield, in collaboration with Action on Smoking and Health, to provide evidence based advice and guidance around youth vaping. With many thanks to Sheffield for enabling us to provide North East versions of these.
