No Smoking Day – Could this Wednesday be the day you start to stop?
March 9th, 2015
This year s national No Smoking Day is Wednesday 11 March and Bristol City Council s stop smoking team will be out and about in various locations across the city throughout the day encouraging smokers to stub out those cigarettes once and for all.
The council s stop smoking service offers free local help to anyone who s ready to quit, and on Wednesday will be in the following locations providing information on the local support available and promoting the health benefits of stopping smoking:
Tesco at Eastville
Broadwalk Shopping Centre
Bristol Royal Infirmary
Southmead Hospital
Councillor Daniella Radice, Assistant Mayor for Public Health said: Stopping smoking is a real challenge, so getting support from experts, as well as friends and family, is very important.
Please don t be shy to seek a little help, and remember you re four times more likely to stop smoking for good by using free stop smoking services.
Smokers already thinking about giving up the cigarettes are encouraged to visit www.smokefreebristol.com to get ready to quit with thousands of others this No Smoking Day.
Kathleen Butt No Smoking case study
Kathleen Butt started smoking at 11 and continued for the next 56 years, by the end of which she was smoking 70 roll ups a day. In the last years of her addiction she started regularly visiting tobacco villages overseas in Belgium as the cost of tobacco was so much cheaper than in the UK.
Every six months she would buy 100 pouches of tobacco for her own consumption. It was only when she counted them up that she realised how much she was smoking.
A traumatic experience in May 2013 when her purchase was seized by Customs, who could not believe the tobacco was all for her, was a moment of epiphany for the pensioner and she realised she had to stop.
She began smoking e-cigarettes to curb her addiction to tobacco but became addicted to these.
At the same time Kathleen decided to prove that the tobacco she had purchased was all for her and took legal action against Customs. After appearing in Magistrates Court she won her appeal against the seizure and the tobacco was returned to her.
But a corner had been turned and she called Smoke free Bristol to find that they were starting a new Stop Smoking group at the Fishponds Primary Care Centre that very night. Kathleen decided to attend.
Last January she was prescribed patches and managed to stop smoking tobacco a month later, although the addiction to e-cigarettes continued. In May she stopped using e-cigarettes too.
Sheer determination, willpower and support from Smokefree Bristol s stop smoking group has got her through.
For more information on how Smokefree Bristol can support you to quit smoking for good, visit www.smokefreebristol .com or call 0117 922 22 55
Back to news