Smoking out action plan funding

There is no faulting the patent ambition displayed by the Welsh Assembly Government in its plans to cut the number of smokers by a third within a decade. The issue which arises however is whether their published action plan to reduce Wales’ smoking rates from the current 24% of adults to just 16% by 2020 is either practical or achievable.

So far the stated actions include:

·       Continuing to deliver the ASSIST smoking prevention programme to over 40 schools per year;

·       Putting Public Health Wales in charge of intervention training for health care professionals to support smoking cessation;

·       Lobbying the UK government on non-devolved issues such as price increases through taxation and reducing young people’s exposure to tobacco imagery;

·       Encouraging local authorities to introduce smoke-free playgrounds;

·       Looking at the possibility of amending the smoke-free legislation to ban smoking in areas of hospital grounds where volumes of smoke may be high and where patients, visitors and staff congregate.

California is cited as the role model for applying a smoke-free agenda across Wales but the Sunshine State initiative also included putting up the price of a packet of cigarettes to help fund the cessation package. Such tax raising abilities are not available here and diminishing health budgets add to the challenge.

The imposition of 5p on the price of a plastic carrier bag was viewed as a sufficient deterrent by pro-environmental ministers – and that was without the need to go asking Westminster for permission. So it is worth examining what measures a better constitutionally equipped Assembly could achieve in safeguarding community health.

What is strange is that no-one seems to be asking.