Tobacco Control Strategy 2024 to 2029
The national picture
Tobacco control is an umbrella term often used to describe the broad range of activities that aim to reduce smoking prevalence and/or reduce exposure to second-hand smoke and the morbidity and mortality it causes.
The 2018 Tobacco Control Plan for England envisions a smokefree generation, defined by a smoking prevalence of 5% or less by 203013. Achieving this goal is crucial for reducing health inequalities and improving healthy life years and requires a rapid decline in smokers. A smokefree 2030 will only be achieved by motivating more smokers to quit using the most effective aids, whilst reducing the number of children and young adults who start smoking each year. Additionally, the government’s Green Paper published in July 2019 emphasised the need to reach the 2030 target, with a new Tobacco Control Plan which has been delayed since December 2021.
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is committed to enhancing prevention in the NHS Long Term Plan, recognising the NHS’s role in tackling tobacco dependence, particularly among specific groups12; especially for hospital inpatients, pregnant women, and long-term users of mental health services. The Khan Review: Making Smoking Obsolete in June 2022 called for urgent government action to address health and economic disparities caused by smoking.
The report presented four recommendations for the government to address to achieve a smokefree England by 2030:
1. Increased investment
2. Increase the age of sale
3. Promotion of vapes as an effective ‘swap to stop’ tool to help people quit smoking
4. Improve prevention in the NHS
This report was a call to action for the government to address the health and economic disparities caused by smoking.
Addressing preventable risk factors like smoking aligns with the Major Conditions Strategy, which focuses on key issues such as cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory conditions.
As of October 2023, Central Government published their intention to introduce a historic new law to protect future generations of young people from the harms of smoking. The proposed new legislation will make it an offence for anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 to be sold tobacco products, effectively raising the smoking age by a year each year until it applies to the whole population. This has the potential to phase out smoking in young people almost completely as early as 2040.