Effectiveness and cost-benefits of smoking education

Evidence from national and international studies now clearly demonstrates that smoking education can be very effective in preventing people, particularly children, from starting to smoke, and helping smokers to give up. A reduction in smoking prevalence would have such a large positive benefit cost ratio for the community that the cost of the health education programmes would be minor in comparison. The British health service has failed to invest adequately in smoking prevention programmes and this needs to be rectified as a matter of urgency if the epidemics of heart disease, lung cancer and bronchitis are to be brought under control.