Tobacco use in Britain witness major decline amid pandemic, 1 million quit smoking
Tobacco use and smoking in England has witnessed a steep plunge in the year 2020 due to coronavirus pandemic and resulting crisis, a recent study stated.
- World News
- 2 min read
Tobacco use in England has witnessed a steep plunge in the year 2020 due to coronavirus pandemic, a recent study stated. While the drop is attributed mainly to lack of socialization amid lockdowns, it is a result to conscious safeguard individual heath global health crisis, experts said. The conclusions were made after the study called the UCL Smoking Toolkit Study was conducted by Institiute of Epidomology and Healthcare.
Sharp decline in smokers
The study showed that there was a sharp decline in the number of smokers across the United Kingdom, which may be attributed to the effects of a pandemic. The success rate of people who tried to stop smoking rose from 14.2 per cent in 2019 to 23 per cent in August 2020, marking the highest percentage in more than a decade.
Another pressure group named Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), in its report estimated that nearly one million people had quit smoking during the COVID-19 pandemic across Britain. While there are multiple pressure group and prevention campaign that may have played a key role in encouraging people to quit smoking, experts believe that it has had happened mainly due to pandemic. As per experts, lack of socialization but heightened desire to reach a healthy world has led to the statistics.
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This comes as the World Health Organisation has partnered with Johnson & Johnson, Amazon and Google in its new anti-tobacco program aimed at introducing new tools to quit smoking. The WHO has been warning that the globe’s 1.3 billion tobacco users are at higher risk during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The initiative includes developing nicotine patches and artificial-intelligence-fuelled support to tackle both the physical and mental challenges to quitting tobacco at once.
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The Access Initiative for Quitting Tobacco program will begin with Jordan, which has the highest rates of tobacco users in the world and will eventually be rolled out to other countries. Dr Ruediger Krech of WHO said that the partnership with tech and pharmaceutical industries will improve people’s health and save lives during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Representative Image / Pixabay